Expedition Week

As we sought to renew old traditions, we also launched new activities this year that we hope will grow into annual elements of the Woodberry experience. One was the expansion of our Expedition Week to include all four forms. Fourth formers have been traveling to the mountains of North Carolina or Southwest Virginia for more than twenty years for a trip focused on bonding them as a class. In 2019 we introduced a third-form expedition to give our youngest boys a chance to learn about themselves and the values we hope boys will embrace during their time at the school. 

This year we added two additional programs. Fifth formers participated in one of a dozen immersive academic courses covering topics such as Civil Rights in Virginia, the Founding Fathers, Civil War battlefields, and astronomy. Off-campus ventures made use of Woodberry’s location to explore nearby sights and learn about topics in greater depth than is possible in the regular curriculum. And finally, the sixth form traveled to southwest Virginia and partnered with the Appalachia Service Project to work on home repairs for the region’s citizens. We hope this experience helps boys develop the “will toward personal sacrifice in service to others” that is a part of our Woodberry’s mission.

Track and Field

Another highlight of the year was our sensational track team, which developed into one of the most successful teams in any sport in our long, storied history of athletic excellence. The team easily won the Virginia Prep League and State meets in both the indoor and outdoor seasons, and the boys also achieved milestones this spring such as winning the Dogwood Track Classic, held at the University of Virginia’s Lannigan Field. The Dogwood Classic is the oldest and most prestigious track meet in the South and the premier high school track meet on the East Coast. Woodberry defeated over 150 teams from Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland, Washington D.C., and beyond. Woodberry athletes scored 115 points and were victorious in six events. By way of comparison, the team that won the meet when it was last held in 2019 scored just 52 points. Numerous individual and relay records fell throughout the year, from high jump to hurdles, discus to the 3,200-meter distance. One of the longest-standing records — in the 110 hurdles — was broken by Albert Amakwa-Asare ’22 thirty-five years after Marvin Coleman and Ken Collins, both from the class of 1987, set the record. Curtis Phillips, who came to Woodberry Forest in 2010 as a member of the science department, serves as the head coach of track and field.

Artists-in-Residence

In the classroom we benefited greatly from the visits of our first two White Family Artists-in-Residence. In the fall we hosted Kent Meyers, the author of short fiction, a memoir, and three award-winning novels that focus on the High Plains. Mr. Meyers spent a month working with students in small groups and one-on-one sessions, working especially closely with senior creative writing students taught by English teacher Ben Hale. 

During the spring we enjoyed the company of David Huddle, a Virginia native and novelist who was a professor at the University of Vermont. Mr. Huddle, who has published ten novels and a similar number of poetry and essay collections, is the recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships. He taught poetry during his visit to campus. These kinds of visits, along with events such as the Fitzpatrick Lecture, delivered this year by political journalist Mike Allen, are important learning opportunities for our community. I’m deeply grateful to the generous parents and alumni who have made these offerings possible. 

Reunion Weekends

In the spring we hosted unprecedented back-to-back Reunion Weekends, welcoming more than 1,100 alumni and guests to campus. Back in April 2020, when the COVID pandemic forced to postpone that year’s reunion, we made a commitment that every class would eventually have the opportunity to gather on campus when it was safe to do so. This spring’s events brought together three-year clusters of graduates, and it was wonderful to see alumni reconnecting not only with their classmates but also with friends in the years ahead of or behind them. The two spring gatherings, along with a great weekend for five- and ten-year alumni last July, were incredibly invigorating for me and the school as a whole. I want every alumnus to know he is always welcome on campus, whether to attend Reunion, see an athletic contest, or visit a former teacher. We want to be a second home for all Woodberry alumni, and reunion weekend is one of the great celebratory moments on our annual calendar.

Community and Belonging

Just as every alumnus has a long-term connection to the school, we want every current student to feel that he fully belongs to the Woodberry brotherhood. This fall we opened the 1968 Multicultural Center in the Walker Building. The center provides a meeting space for student groups and contains historical displays exploring the history of the school’s integration. The center’s name marks the year when the board of trustees voted to open Woodberry to all students, regardless of their race or religious background. Boys have enjoyed using the space for club meetings, informal gatherings, movie nights, and high-level, interactive student conversations called "fish bowls.” 

This spring Richmond-based artist Ross Browne painted a new mural on Community Street. As Mr. Browne said in his artists’ statement, the mural “serves as a marker and as a symbol of the way in which Woodberry Forest School has evolved to serve a more diverse community of learners,” with a goal of everyone in the community being “able to look at this mural and feel as though they belong.” We chose to install the mural in the expanded game room on Community Street, which has become a hub of student activity since it reopened in the fall of 2020. I’m grateful for the work Taaj Davis, our coordinator of community and belonging and a member of the history department, has done in the past year, both to advance these two projects and to ensure all members of the student body feel they belong to our united brotherhood of Tigers.

The Campaign for the Boys and Amici Fund

In November we launched the public phase of the Campaign for the Boys. We have already achieved the first two aims of the campaign — fully restoring the Walker Building, and increasing financial support for faculty and staff. For example, all members of the staff now earn a living wage, faculty compensation is more competitive, and we’ve been able to improve faculty benefits, including housing, thanks to generous gifts to the campaign. Our remaining (and most aspirational) challenge is to fully endow tuition assistance for boys yet to come. When we cross that financial rubicon, we will ensure that every boy with the potential and will to succeed can become a Tiger, regardless of his family’s financial situation. Meeting this goal will enhance the quality of the student body, strengthen the school for decades to come, and help us continue to provide the most transformational all-boys, all-boarding education in the country.

During the public launch a group of current and former trustees stepped forward to challenge the entire Woodberry community to meet our goal of endowing tuition assistance. Propelled by their generosity, we seek to complete our goal to raise $80 million in new tuition assistance funds. At present, we are currently $18 million away from reaching this mark. I’m incredibly grateful to the alumni, parents, and friends who have stepped forward so far with gifts to support the campaign, and I look forward to finishing with a flourish in the coming year. 

Every gift to the Amici Fund also supports the Campaign for the Boys, and this past year was a record-setting one for annual giving. We received more than $4.3 million in Amici gifts, with more than 65 percent of alumni and 90 percent of parents making a contribution. Woodberry continues to enjoy the highest level of alumni support of any independent school or college in the country, and the consistently high level of support is a testament to the enduring bonds each of you enjoys with the school. This success would not be possible without the extraordinary network of nearly 600 parent and alumni volunteers who work so hard to support the Amici Fund and the school. 

Listening to Students, Parents, and Alumni to Guide Our Future

One of my most important roles as headmaster is to work with the board of trustees to establish Woodberry’s long-term direction. As we discern what boys need for the world they will inhabit, and how the school can best support them, it is important to understand what matters most for students and alumni. We use two important, ongoing surveys to help us shape the strategic roadmap for the school’s years ahead. 

The first is our Alumni Longitudinal Survey, which has been given five times and is taken each year by the sixth formers, as well as alumni who graduated three, ten, twenty, thirty, forty, and fifty years ago. Two classes have now taken the identical survey twice — as seniors at Woodberry and then as juniors in college — and more than half of alumni have been invited to participate. The benefit of this type of multi-dimensional survey is that we hear from a wide range of people and can track how the Woodberry experience has evolved over time. It’s useful to be reminded that some ideals have enduring worth across our entire community. For example, alumni of all ages, as well as students, say they “learned to value honor and integrity” while at Woodberry, with virtually no difference in response whether the survey taker is 17 or 67 years old. Alumni and current students also share common beliefs on what traits they value most in other men, with both groups selecting “integrity, humility, and resilience” as the top three. In other areas we hear consistently from both seniors and alumni that we have work to do, such as in helping students develop a more global perspective, ideally through more opportunities off campus. The expanded Expedition Week, which I mentioned earlier, is one way we are responding to the feedback we receive. Another area of potential growth is helping students learn to relate well with women in academic and professional settings. After hearing consistently that this was an area where we could grow, we’ve hired more outstanding women to serve on the faculty as teachers, coaches, and advisors. We’re also pushing hard to become more representative of the wider population, and now enroll 24 percent boys of color. Furthermore, the 10 percent of our students who are from outside the United States come from 30 nations, including two seniors from Ukraine.   

The second survey, taken regularly by all current students, is run by a group called Authentic Connections. The survey is used in similar high-achieving schools, giving us a chance to see how our students compare to peers around the country. The Authentic Connections survey has helped us understand some of the key sources of stress and anxiety in the lives of young people. We want to make sure that Woodberry’s routine and structure help boys develop resilience in the face of adversity. The survey has also given us important, real-time feedback on how well we are doing with our commitment to establish a community where all of our students feel like they belong. We’ve seen a significant decrease in the three years we’ve been doing this survey in the number of students who say they feel excluded from the Woodberry brotherhood or discriminated against because of who they are.

Closing Thoughts

The past two years have been the most challenging in decades for educators around the world. The faculty and staff at Woodberry have worked tirelessly to deliver the best possible experience for our students, and we benefit from the unswerving loyalty and dedication they invest in the boys and the community. It’s worth noting that more than one in five of our full-time employees has served Woodberry for more than twenty years. The service of these men and women is an inspiration to all of us. 

In good times or challenging ones, the work we do on campus is only possible because of the extended network of Tigers around the world who support us each day. Thank you for everything you do for the Woodberry community, whether that’s making a gift to Amici, helping a young alumnus find an internship, or volunteering on a regional association board. 

The enduring strength of Woodberry is our unwavering commitment to principles laid out in the school's early days. You see these values on the plaque next to the front door of the Walker Building, as they were articulated by J. Carter Walker, the school’s first headmaster: a steadfast dedication to intellectual thoroughness and moral integrity. These ideals have guided Woodberry well for 133 years and will continue to guide our course into the future.

Thank you again for your commitment to Woodberry. I wish each of you a rewarding and restorative summer, and I hope you will visit us on campus soon. 

Sincerely,

Byron Hulsey

Headmaster