MICDS Board of Visitors Looks to the Future

The MICDS Board of Visitors returned to campus last week to examine the central question: What is the distinctive promise of an MICDS education, and how should that promise shape the choices we make over the next three years?

The Board of Visitors is a group of alumni who live outside of the St. Louis area. “That is exactly what makes them so valuable,” says Head of School Chelle Wabrek. “We bring together people from different generations and very different fields, and ask them to put their expertise to work on one specific question facing the School. The gift of their time every year is a real one.”

Those of us who arrive at MICDS every day to work and learn, and the many alumni who live in St. Louis, know MICDS up close. That closeness is a strength, to be sure. Alumni who have built their lives and careers in other places see MICDS from a different perspective. That unique “outside” perspective can inform how we identify the difference between what is good about MICDS and what is truly essential to who we are.

Examining the distinctive promise of an MICDS education and how we can best fulfill it will have lasting effects. Mrs. Wabrek notes that tackling that question “will help as I work with our community and our Board of Trustees to turn our strategic framework into a more focused, meaningful, and measurable plan.”

During the Board of Visitors’ two days on campus, they toured classrooms, talked with teachers, and heard directly from our students about the value they place on their MICDS education. They also took a deep dive into college trends with our Head of College Counseling, Matt Essman, which gave them significant insight into the college landscape that we help our upperclassmen navigate.

Board members were pleased to be joined by members of our Alumni & Development office, and also spent a significant amount of time talking with Mrs. Wabrek. “They worked alongside me on the School’s strategic direction, listening for what feels most distinctive about MICDS today, where our aspirations and our lived experience may not yet fully line up, and what should be demonstrably different about an MICDS education three years from now,” she says.

Among all the information they were given, what was most tangible to the Board of Visitors was how real the MICDS community is. “I expected them to enjoy being back on campus, and they did, but this went far beyond a homecoming gathering,” says Mrs. Wabrek. “They could hear ‘community’ in the stories our students were telling, and in the way our teachers talked. I think that is something really unique about MICDS: the community is created because individuals are known deeply.”

Our Board of Visitors could see that in their conversations, and it was true in their own lived experiences with the school. These alumni have lived and worked all over the country, and they know how rare it is to have a sense of community like the one at MICDS. Mrs. Wabrek noticed it, too. “Hearing them name it so clearly reminded me of what we have, and how carefully we need to tend it.”