Real-world classes prepare students
A relevant education

Lisa Waybright ’04 wants to create computer art. Emily Chang ’03 wants to go to medical school. Sarah Belen ’04 wants to build a submarine. All three are finding support for their interests and preparation for college study in SMS courses that break new academic ground and bury old girls’ school stereotypes.

“Take a look at our math program,” said Head of School Margaret R. Broad. “We know young women learn best when they can collaborate, so that’s how we teach. St. Margaret’s calculus students won the local college’s math team competition this year.”

Advanced placement calculus is just one example of how the school’s curriculum has kept up with the times.

Anatomy is another. Science Department Head Andrea Robinson developed the new, two-trimester course to provide students with a solid foundation for college study in the health sciences. The course encompasses major body systems and physiological processes, as well as aspects of microbiology.

Students gathered around the lab bench one morning as Ms. Robinson set up a laboratory exercise on the immune system. Students were to clean their hands, rub them on a computer keyboard, wash their hands with one of a dozen antibacterial products, then innoculate a sugar plate in a petri dish to see if any bacteria remained.

“How should we record our results?” she asked the class, initiating a rapid give-and-take that engaged all 11 of the students.

“Yes, a chart is good. What goes in this column? What goes across the top? How will we measure bacteria growth–should we estimate a percentage or count colonies? Does anyone have an hypothesis about which product will work the best?”

Next year, she’ll introduce a new advanced biology course that will use a college textbook.

“Science is the subject of the future,” Ms. Robinson said. “It’s really exciting that St. Margaret’s is willing to change its curriculum to keep moving forward.”

Across the hall from the biology lab, a bright green worm crawled across a computer screen to bite a giant apple. At other workstations, a spaceship landed, flowers bloomed, and a snowman lost his head. With only a few days before their final animation project was due, the eight students in George McDowell’s multimedia design class were hard at work finishing their 30-second movies.

Earlier in the trimester, they’d used three different software programs to assemble photo collages, draw computer illustrations, and create web pages.

“This course opens doors for students,” Mr. McDowell said. “Each year, several students take what they’ve learned and apply it in senior independent study projects at marketing firms and advertising agencies.”

Meanwhile, physics students gathered on the hockey field under the watchful eye of Dr. Rick Kahler to launch the rockets they’d built. The project also included calculating how far the rockets would fly and writing a research paper on rocketry.

Enthusiasm must have helped to fuel the projectiles, because some flew far beyond campus boundaries–a fitting metaphor for the careers in math, science, and technology that await many of these young women, thanks to SMS.


















      Upper right:   Physics students prepare their rockets for launch;
      Second right:   SMS mathletes won a regional calculus contest in 02-03;
      Third right:   Anatomy students determine which antibacterial soap kills the most germs;
      Bottom right:   A multimedia student ponders the next frame in her computer animation project;
      Left in text:   A photo collage by Kaoru Higaki ’05;