Small School, Big ResultsThe 2011 La Lumiere School Strategic Plan

Small School, Big ResultsThe 2011 La Lumiere School Strategic Plan

Table of Contents

6 Introduction and History8 Strategic Planning History10 Mission and Guiding Principles12 Community14 Faculty and Staff16 Academic Program18 Co-curricular Activities Athletics Program Arts Program20 Faith Identity22 Financial Health and Alumni Relations

24 Board Trustees26 Strategic Planning Committee

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“I certainly looked up to my teachers, not because

they were teachers, but because it was clear to me

that they were dedicated to my growth, not just

in the classroom but on the athletic field and in

drama and on the newspaper.”

John Roberts ’73, Chief Justice of the United States

4

Introduction and History

In the early 1960s, James R. Moore -- the young and impressive assistant headmaster at Canterbury School, a Catholic boarding school in Connecticut -- was approached by a small group of businessmen dedicated to the dream of building a boys boarding school in the Midwest, to be run by Catholic laymen.

These ambitious entrepreneurs had just purchased the estate of Edward Lalumier north of La Porte, Indiana.They challenged Moore to move west and open a new school on land that had nothing on it but trees, a lake, and an old country home. And they wanted it done in a year.

Moore was thrilled. He moved with his wife, Billie, and their young family to La Porte, where he began telling anyone who would listen about this vision of a school with small classes, high academic standards, and unmatched personal attention. He boasted of a versatile and dedicated faculty eager to teach classes in the day, coach sports in the afternoon, and oversee study halls and dorm life at night.

La Lumiere would offer an exceptional education, Jim Moore argued, unrivalled anywhere in the Midwest. Parents put their faith in him, and in the fall of 1964, La Lumiere School welcomed its charter class of 20 freshmen boys. Over time, the school added a chapel, a gym, a library, classrooms and dorms -- and another class each year until all four classes were filled. As the first students approached graduation, Headmaster Moore visited each student’s top college choice to introduce himself and his school. Those graduates of La Lumiere knew it was unlikely that so many mentors would ever care for them so completely again.

Nearly a half-century later, the school has grown in size and sophistication. Today La Lumiere provides a comprehensive day and boarding college-preparatory education for more than 200 young men and women from a rich diversity of backgrounds. Yet the distinguishing features of its founding days remain -- a family-like community, a superb educational program, a commitment to Catholic values, and an exceptionally talented core of great teachers who are wholly dedicated to their students.

The school is led by Headmaster Michael Kennedy, La Lumiere class of 1986, and is governed by a board of trustees selected from dedicated parents and alumni. It seeks to develop character, scholarship, and faith while remaining both independently accredited and faithful to its Catholic heritage.

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Strategic Planning History

The strategic planning process that led to the current plan was initiated in 2010 by the Headmaster and the Board of Trustees, with the encouragement of the ISACS 2009 accreditation report. The previous strategic plan was completed in 2002 and followed by the Courageous Vision campaign -- designed to fund the school’s aim of being the “premier day and boarding school in the Midwest.”

Thanks to the guidance of the Board, the leadership of Headmaster Kennedy, and the hard work of faculty and staff, La Lumiere has enjoyed a surge of recent growth, with enrollment increasing from 120 to 210 students over five years.

The rising demand for a La Lumiere education has brought great vitality to the school and an influx of exceptionally talented students. At the same time, it invites a review of school programs and deep reflection on school priorities to ensure that La Lumiere honors its mission and maintains its family-like culture in a new climate with a larger enrollment.

Prompted by these considerations and eager to make the most of La Lumiere’s rising appeal to advance the mission of the school, Headmaster Kennedy asked Mr. Jeff Bradley, partner at the distinguished and well-known consulting group the Educators’ Collaborative, to guide the school in a strategic planning process, with the goal of presenting a strategic plan for the review and approval of the board of trustees at its February 2011 meeting. This plan is the work of a 15-member committee, which took into account the results of 300 online surveys and 80 written responses from trustees, faculty, staff, alumni and friends of La Lumiere.

At their February 10, 2011 meeting, the Board of Trustees of La Lumiere accepted the Strategic Plan with six areas of focus:

•Community•Faculty and Staff•Academic Program

Following the recommendations contained in the Plan, the Board then assigned three task forces to develop recommendations relative to Community, Co-Curricular Activities, and Faith Identity – three areas that all agreed deserved more focused time and attention than what had been allotted in the fall. Specific initiatives and action plans are in constant development and will be communicated to the La Lumiere community on an ongoing basis.

•Co-curricular Activities•Faith Identity•Financial Health and Alumni Relations

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Mission and Guiding Principles

La Lumiere is a lay Catholic coeducational boarding and day school offering a rigorous college-preparatory education grounded in character, scholarship, and faith. Over the past 50 years, the La Lumiere family has come to protect and defend the distinctive elements that have made La Lumiere a transforming experience for so many loyal alumni.

The core of a La Lumiere education rests on four elements:•A family-like community where everyone knows everyone.•A set of rigorous academic and co-curricular offerings that help students develop their talents.•An atmosphere of Christian ideals, grounded in the school’s Catholic heritage.•An exceptional faculty uncommonly committed to the students.

Those four elements create a climate for students to thrive. A caring community encourages students to challenge themselves. Rigorous academic and co-curricular programs ensure that all students develop their gifts, participate in the life of the school, and build a family of lifelong friends. Christian ideals form the basis for the school’s culture and the moral context for its curriculum. Faculty members provide the knowledge and inspiration that help students excel.

All four elements are reflected in the student-teacher bond. Very few schools can offer the one-on-one mentoring that comes at La Lumiere. Teachers work with students in class, in sports, in the arts, in study hall and in the dorm. When students are in the constant presence of excellent faculty they trust and respect, they work harder and do better. As generations of La Lumiere students have discovered, once the teachers know you and your talents, you cannot hide; you have to perform.

In the opinion of John Roberts, La Lumiere class of 1973 and Chief Justice of the United States, La Lumiere’s greatest strength is in its teachers’ “dedication to the growth of the individual, not just academically but in character.” As he put it: “I certainly looked up to my teachers, not because they were teachers, but because it was clear to me that they were dedicated to my growth, not just in the classroom but on the athletic field and in drama and on the newspaper.”

These four elements are La Lumiere’s formula for an incomparable education.

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Community

Goal: As it absorbs the impressive recent growth in enrollment, La Lumiere will preserve the signature feature of the school at its founding: a family-like community in which everyone knows everyone, each student is nurtured and challenged, and all students form bonds with friends and faculty mentors that last a lifetime.

Rationale: A family-like community is an unrivalled climate for helping students flourish -- especially a community where smart, caring adults play a defining role.

When teachers and coaches are a constant, caring presence, every student forms deep bonds with faculty mentors. In that environment, students lose their reticence. They eagerly approach adults. They say what they think. They ask for what they need. This helps their teachers know them better -- and when teachers know their students in a deep way from many dimensions, they’re able to see their students’ gifts and help them excel.

Deep relationships and high performance go together. That’s why a family-like community always will be a passionate emphasis of La Lumiere School.

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Faculty and Staff

Goal: La Lumiere will identify the distinctive characteristics of its exceptional teachers and staff, recruit individuals who demonstrate those qualities, and retain them with competitive pay, opportunities for professional growth, and a school experience that is unrivalled for its impact on the students.

Rationale: A quality education is directly related to the time students spend with smart, caring teachers. At La Lumiere, faculty and staff dedicate themselves to the students with an intensity no school can beat -- working as teachers, coaches, advisers, dorm parents, mentors, and friends. The impact of this personal attention cannot be overstated. The constant presence of caring teachers changes a student’s behavior.

This level of student contact is not attractive to all teachers. But for those who are

called to it, it’s the most fulfilling career they can imagine. Knowing where to find these exceptional professionals, how to recognize them, and how to help them grow as teachers once they’re on campus will be decisive in the success of La Lumiere School.

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Academic Program

Goal: Goal: La Lumiere will offer an academic program in the sciences andhumanities that tracks the most challenging curricula offered in American high schools. It will emphasize critical thinking and writing across the curriculum while expanding elective courses in technology and the arts.

Rationale: A tight community with talented faculty proves its full value when matched by an academic program that pushes the students to the limits of theirabilities. Only a truly rigorous program -- taught by exceptional teachers and marked by personal attention -- will ensure that students can achieve the most ambitious academic goals: to learn to conduct research, absorb and analyze information, dissect an argument, write precisely and persuasively, become knowledgeable in their subjects, and make a seamless academic entry into the nation’s top universities.

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Co-Curricular Activities

Athletics programArts program

Goal: La Lumiere will provide a wide array of both required and optional co-curricular activities designed to challenge students, help them discover their gifts, and help them become well-rounded adults.

Rationale: The human qualities and abilities that make for a good life cannot be learned in an academic program alone. They come also from lessons in skill and character learned outside the classroom. That is why co-curricular activities are a crucial and required feature of La Lumiere School. They enhance the students’ education, strengthen relationships with teachers, and deepen the community bond.

Athletics program

Goal: All La Lumiere students will be required to participate in at least one competitive athletic program per year to help them develop teamwork, discipline, make friends, become fit, and feel part of the school.

Rationale: Sport is life lived at high velocity. It demands discipline, teamwork, stamina, and the emotional balance needed to lose with grace and win with class. Athletics can teach crucial lessons of life in a single season -- whether one is athletically gifted or not and whether one will play beyond high school or not. This is why athletics have been an emphatic feature of the La Lumiere experience since its founding -- because sports are an incomparable coach of character.

Arts program

Goal: La Lumiere will offer introductory opportunities in the fine arts and performing arts to give students an experience in self-discovery and self-expression while offering more advanced students the chance to develop their talents at a higher level.

Rationale: Experience in the arts is owed to all students to help them explore their gifts, nurture their creativity, and help them learn to express themselves in vivid and distinctive ways.

At a time when many of the world’s best-selling products are blends of art and engineering, art is not an academic luxury. Art is vital instruction in the many dimensions of self-expression and important practical knowledge for those who want to make a living in a world that loves beauty.

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Faith Identity

Goal: La Lumiere will maintain an atmosphere of Christian ideals while preserving the school’s Roman Catholic identity and nurturing Catholic students in their faith. The school also will respect the diverse makeup of our community, supporting non-Catholic faculty, staff, and students in the exploration and expression of their own faiths.

Rationale: “The cause of the human person will only be served if knowledge is joined to conscience.” Those words, written by Pope John Paul II in his encyclical on Catholic universities, express the combined call to “character, scholarship, faith” that distinguishes La Lumiere.

In a world of accelerating scientific advances, where human capacities are growing in every area but virtue, moral development is essential to personal growth. At La Lumiere, we strive to form the moral character of our students based on the teachings of Christ.

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Financial Health and Alumni Relations

Goal: La Lumiere will build a financial plan to support an outstanding college-preparatory education for a small, diverse student body. The plan will draw on sound models of projected enrollment, day-to-boarding student ratio, and market-sensitive tuition. Tuition revenue will be supplemented with grants, charitable contributions, and endowment income, along with support from a vibrant network of alumni who donate to the school financially, are in close touch with one another, and support the aspirations of younger members of the La Lumiere family.

Rationale: The La Lumiere family faces a worthy challenge in sustaining a school that is small enough to offer deep personal attention yet financially strong enough to have the programs that distinguish a top school. Achieving both ideals will require wise fiscal management, responsible tuition levels, generous fundraising, prudent spending, and -- especially -- the deep involvement of many alumni.

Graduates of La Lumiere support their school in proportion to their involvement with it. Strong efforts to ensure the close association of alumni with the school -- and especially to enlist the help of older alumni on behalf of younger alums -- will keep both groups connected to the school and ensure that the special community of La Lumiere extends itself across generations.

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Board of Trustees

James W. Kaminski, Chairman

Michael H. Kennedy ’86, Headmaster

Ned Costello ’81

Connie Falcone ’83

Shaw Friedman

Daniel Hillenbrand ’84

Mark Leyden ’77

Johanna Miller

Rick Newcombe ’69

John Rumely ’69

John Schirger ’84

Dolph Smith ’77

Ceil Tristano

Daniel Walsh ’95

Rev. Wayne Watts

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Strategic Plan Committee Co-Chairmen

Rick Newcombe

Johanna Miller

Kim Yekel

Drafting Committee

Rick Newcombe, Chairman

Ned Costello ’81

Connie Falcone ’83

Tom Rosshirt ’77

James Kaminski

Michael Kennedy

Johanna Miller

John Rumely ’69

Kim Yekel

Strategic Plan Workshop

James Kaminski

Michael Kennedy

Robert Bartels

Ned Costello

Jaime Frankle ’04

Dan Jaffee

Robert Kemper

Dan Luck

Johanna Miller

Strategic Planning Committee

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Denise Ndukwu

Rick Newcombe

Tom Rosshirt ’77

John Rumely ’69

Sarah Tristano ’04

Bridget Van Eekeren ’88

Andy Vanderboegh ’88

Kim Yekel

Assisted by Partner, Educator’s Collaborative, LLCConsultant to the SchoolJeffrey C. Bradley

6801 N. Wilhelm Road, La Porte, Indiana 46350 Phone: 219.326.7450 • Fax: 219.325.3185 • lalumiere.org