Northfield Mount Hermon Today
All students are required to participate in the school's work program. The school's handbook states, "The work program is a tradition that dates back to the school's beginning and allows students to know the dignity of labor. The program creates a sense of investment in the welfare of the school and a unique community spirit." Student jobs include washing dishes, shelving books in the library, and making maple syrup on the farm. Some students' work duties include editing the school newspaper, performing residential leadership duties, presiding over computer labs, or printing photographs.
The percentage of international students at NMH is above the average of many elite private schools, at 20 per cent compared to perhaps 10 per cent at other institutions. (The 2006–07 handbook lists about 120 students with non-US addresses, more than three-fourths of them from East Asia.) In many cases, international students make a connection with the school through family members who also attended NMH. Earlier in the school's history, some international students were evangelized by Moody or his affiliated denominations and religious missions in the 19th century.
In 2004, the trustees of Northfield Mount Hermon School decided to close the Northfield campus and to consolidate the school as of September 2005 with a smaller coeducational student body on the Mount Hermon campus. This decision has been controversial. Before consolidation, the school had about 1,100 students enrolled per year; enrollment has now settled to slightly above 600 students.
In May 2006, it was announced that David Bolger '50 would donate $10 million in securities to the school. It is the largest gift in the school's history. In addition to his $10 million gift, in October 2006, it was announced that David Bolger will donate another $2.5 million to fund a new admissions building. In June 2006 it was announced that William R. Rhodes '53 had donated $5 million as the lead gift for a new $29 million arts center. The arts center, opened in the fall of 2008, is named Rhodes Center for the Arts in honor of Rhodes and his father Edward, class of 1916.
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Famous quotes containing the words mount and/or today:
“On the 31st of August, 1846, I left Concord in Massachusetts for Bangor and the backwoods of Maine,... I proposed to make excursions to Mount Ktaadn, the second highest mountain in New England, about thirty miles distant, and to some of the lakes of the Penobscot, either alone or with such company as I might pick up there.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Justice begins with the recognition of the necessity of sharing. The oldest law is that which regulates it, and this is still the most important law today and, as such, has remained the basic concern of all movements which have at heart the community of human activities and of human existence in general.”
—Elias Canetti (b. 1905)