Germantown Friends School | |
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Location | |
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31 West Coulter Street Germantown, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania | |
Information | |
Type | Private, college preparatory |
Motto | Behold, I have set before thee an open door. |
Established | 1845 |
Head of school | Dana Weeks |
Faculty | 87 Full Time 24 Part Time |
Grades | K–12 |
Gender | Co-educational |
Enrollment | 1021 |
Student to teacher ratio | 5:1 |
Campus type | Urban |
Color(s) | Navy, White, Orange |
Athletics conference | Friends School League |
Mascot | Tiger |
Nickname | Tigers |
Tuition | $32,150–$46,750 (2024-25)[1] |
Affiliation | Religious Society of Friends |
Website | www |
40°01′58″N 75°10′18″W / 40.03278°N 75.17167°W Germantown Friends School (GFS) is a coeducational independent PreK–12 school in the Germantown neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the United States under the supervision of Germantown Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). It is governed by a School Committee whose members are drawn from the membership of the Meeting, the school's alumni and parents of current students and alumni. The head of school is Dana Weeks.
History
Germantown Friends School was founded in 1845 by Germantown Monthly Meeting. The school was founded in response to a request from the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. Until the early 20th century, Germantown Friends was a "select" school, meaning that only the children of Quaker parents were admitted. Germantown Monthly Meeting was an Orthodox meeting and valued classical education. Athletics and the arts were considered a diversion from the essentials needed by young people.
Notable alumni
This list includes graduates and non-graduate former students.[a]
- Emily Bazelon, 1989, journalist[2]
- Eric Bazilian, 1971, musician and songwriter[3]
- Jesse Biddle, 2010, baseball player[4]
- Sandra Boynton, 1970, cartoonist and songwriter[5]
- Sarah Chang, violinist[6]
- Owen Chamberlain, 1937, physicist[7]
- Walter Cope, architect[8]
- Erica Armstrong Dunbar, 1990, historian and author, National Book Award Finalist[9]
- Garrett Dutton III, aka G. Love, 1991, Musician and front man of the band G. Love & Special Sauce[10]
- Jennifer Fox (born 1959), film producer, director, cinematographer[11]
- Michael Friedman, 1993, composer[12]
- Janet Brown Guernsey, 1931, physicist[13]
- Nathaniel Kahn, 1981, filmmaker, writer and director of My Architect, a film about his father, Louis Kahn[14]
- Rob Monster, Dutch-American technology executive.[15]
- Tom Myers, 1976, sound engineer nominated for two Academy Awards.[16]
- Saul Perlmutter, 1977, astrophysicist; winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the accelerating universe[17]
- Edmund R. Purves, 1914, architect and executive director of the American Institute of Architects.[18]
- Esther Biddle Rhoads, educator, relief worker[19]
- Merrie Spaeth, Political public relations consultant; appeared in the film The World of Henry Orient while a sophomore at GFS.[20]
- Daniel Spielman, 1988, Sterling Professor of Computer Science at Yale, Macarthur Fellow[21]
- Makiko Tanaka, 1963, Japanese Foreign Minister, 2001–2002[22]
- Rebecca Traister, 1993, Journalist (New York Magazine, Elle)[23]
- Kristen Welker, 1994. NBC News journalist[24]
- Dan Wolf, 1975, Massachusetts state senator, founder of Cape Air[25]
Notable staff
- Shari Heck, former musician, member of Cyberbully Mom Club.[26]
Entertainment
- The main character from the TV series Twin Peaks, FBI Agent Dale Cooper, supposedly grew up in Germantown and attended Germantown Friends School (as created by director David Lynch, who spent many years in Philadelphia).[27] They were also referenced in The Goldbergs' spinoff show, Schooled, in the fifth episode of the first season, "Money for RENT".
Notes
References
- ^ "Tuition & Financial Aid". germantownfriends.org. Retrieved July 3, 2024.
- ^ "GFS grad gets personal while discussing the book she wrote on bullying", WHYY-FM, February 25, 2013. Accessed May 5, 2024. "About 100 parents, students, alumni and faculty gathered at Germantown Friends School’s Yarnell Auditorium on Sunday night to hear GFS grad Emily Bazelon discuss her new book, Sticks and Stones: Defeating the Culture of Bullying and Rediscovering the Power of Character and Empathy."
- ^ "Founding Hooters member and GFS grad Eric Bazilian teaches students to write songs", Chestnut Hill Local, June 10, 2014. Accessed May 5, 2024. "The Hooters co-founder and Germantown Friends School graduate Eric Bazilian ’71 recently gave a lesson in songwriting to ninth-grade music composition students at GFS."
- ^ Lauber, Scott. "Former top Phillies prospect Jesse Biddle returns home with Braves", The Philadelphia Inquirer, April 27 2018. Accessed May 5, 2024. "While baseball continues to buzz over the arrival of Braves phenom Ronald Acuna, Germantown Friends product Jesse Biddle will complete his first week in the majors by facing the Phillies."
- ^ "Sandra Boynton shares her story", Harvard Gazette, February 21, 2016. Accessed May 5, 2024. "Boynton grew up in Philadelphia, and attended kindergarten through 12th grade at Germantown Friends School, a Quaker school where her father, educational publisher Robert W. Boynton, M.A.T. ’47, taught English."
- ^ Hoffman, Jan. "After Child's Play, What Comes Next?" Archived 2024-05-13 at the Wayback Machine, The New York Times, October 3, 1993. Accessed May 5, 2024. "But Sarah, a seventh-grader at the Germantown Friends School in Philadelphia, has discovered swimming, horseback riding and roller-blading."
- ^ In Memoriam: Owen Chamberlain Archived 2024-05-13 at the Wayback Machine, University of California. Accessed May 5, 2024. "After the family’s move to Philadelphia in 1930, Owen attended school there, including high school at Germantown Friends School, and then went on to Dartmouth."
- ^ Walter Cope Archived 2023-03-23 at the Wayback Machine, University of Pennsylvania Archives and Record Center. Accessed May 5, 2024. "Walter Cope was born in Philadelphia in 1860. After attending Germantown Friends School, Cope opted to learn architecture in the office of Addison Hutton, who designed buildings for Lehigh University and Bryn Mawr College."
- ^ Brooks, Emily. "Social-justice ‘teach in’ effort took over Germantown Friends School on Friday" Archived 2024-05-13 at the Wayback Machine, WHYY-FM, December 15, 2014. Accessed May 5, 2024. "Keynote addresses were delivered by Erica Armstrong Dunbar, GFS alum and associate professor of Black American Studies and History at the University of Delaware and Michael O’Bryan, a humanitarian artist and youth-housing advocate."
- ^ "Tuned In to G Love & Special Sauce" Archived 2024-05-13 at the Wayback Machine, WLS-TV, January 28, 2010. Accessed May 5, 2024. "Garrett Dutton III, better known as G Love, is a former student of the Germantown Friends School."
- ^ Gray, Ellen. "In HBO's 'The Tale,' Narberth's Jennifer Fox turns to fiction to tell her own tough, true story" Archived 2024-05-13 at the Wayback Machine, The Philadelphia Inquirer, May 18, 2018. Accessed May 5, 2024. "The story in The Tale, which makes its HBO debut on May 26, belongs to Narberth native and veteran filmmaker Jennifer Fox, who was a seventh grader at Germantown Friends School when she wrote a short story about 'two very special people'..."
- ^ Stearns, David Patrick. "Brilliant songwriter Michael Friedman, out of Germantown Friends, is being memorialized in an audacious 9-album project" Archived 2024-05-13 at the Wayback Machine, The Philadelphia Inquirer, December 13, 2019. Accessed May 5, 2024.
- ^ "Janet Guernsey". www.aip.org. American Institute of Physics. 24 September 2021. Archived from the original on 2 April 2019. Retrieved 9 May 2024.
- ^ Vitarelli, Alicia. "Chestnut Hill director takes close look inside the art world in HBO documentary" Archived 2024-05-13 at the Wayback Machine, WPVI-TV, November 9, 2018. Accessed May 5, 2024. "Kahn, a proud graduate of Germantown Friends, says it means the world to be recognized for his work here at home."
- ^ "Epik is a refuge for the deplatformed far right. Here's why its CEO insists on doing it". CNN. 2021-12-09. Archived from the original on 2023-05-24. Retrieved 2023-07-15.
- ^ "Tom Myers". IMDb. Archived from the original on 2024-05-13. Retrieved 2010-05-25.
- ^ "Former Mt. Airy native and Nobel Prize winner Saul Perlmutter featured on Fresh Air" Archived 2024-05-13 at the Wayback Machine, WHYY-FM, November 14, 2011. Accessed May 5, 2024. "Saul Perlmutter, a graduate of graduate of Greene Street Friends School, Germantown Friends School, is an astrophysicist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley."
- ^ Tatman, Sandra L., Purves, Edmund R. (1897-1964) data from the Philadelphia Architects and Buildings (PAB) project of the Athenaeum of Philadelphia
- ^ Rombeau, John L.; Muldoon, Donna (1997). Jonathan E. Rhoads, M.D. : Quaker sense and sensibility in the world of surgery. Internet Archive. Philadelphia : Hanley & Belfus. pp. 16–21. ISBN 978-1-56053-252-1.
- ^ "The Girls of Henry Orient", Time, May 15, 1964
- ^ Avril, Tom. "A mathematician and computer scientist with area ties wins a MacArthur fellowship" Archived 2022-09-07 at the Wayback Machine, The Philadelphia Inquirer, October 3, 2012. Accessed May 5, 2024. "Spielman attended Episcopal Academy for ninth grade, then switched to Germantown Friends for the rest of high school - where, because of his modesty, his math abilities remained a secret to many."
- ^ Halloran, Richard "Japanese Premier's Daughter Takes a Modern Role" Archived 2024-05-13 at the Wayback Machine, The New York Times, January 14, 1974. Accessed May 5, 2024. "Some have studied in Western-style schools at home while others, like Mrs. Tanaka, have been abroad. She spent three years at the Germantown Friends School in Philadelphia and was graduated from high school there in 1963."
- ^ Sasko, Claire. "Q&A: Feminist Writer Rebecca Traister on How Anger Shapes Philly Politics" Archived 2024-05-13 at the Wayback Machine, Philadelphia, December 14, 2018. Accessed May 5, 2024. "Then I attended the Abington school district through sixth grade and Germantown Friends School from seventh to 12th grade."
- ^ "GFS grad named co-anchor of Weekend Today" Archived 2024-05-13 at the Wayback Machine, Chestnut Hill Local, January 17, 2020. Accessed May 5, 2024. "NBC News White House correspondent Kristen Welker, 43, who graduated from Germantown Friends School in 1994, became co-anchor of the Weekend Today show last weekend."
- ^ "Mass. State Senator and GFS alumnus speaks at the school" Archived 2024-05-13 at the Wayback Machine, Chestnut Hill Local, October 15, 2014. Accessed May 5, 2024. "After graduating from GFS in 1975, Wolf attended Wesleyan University, and his passion for aviation won out over his interest in public service, and he studied to become a pilot."
- ^ Heck, Shari. "LinkedIn of Shari Heck". Retrieved 28 October 2023.
- ^ Frost, Scott: The Autobiography of F.B.I. Special Agent Dale Cooper: My Life, My Tapes, page 1, Pocket Books, 1991.