The Lowell Whiteman School

Residential & Student Life

LWS has been a co-ed college preparatory boarding school since 1957. In the 1980’s, the school gave the same opportunity for day students. As a result, LWS is an almost even mix of boarding and day students. We see this is a huge advantage because it provides connection to the local community most boarding schools don’t have.

Ties are also strong with the local high school through the sports programs and high school events.  We are a small school and though we don’t have our own spring and fall sports teams, LWS students play high school football, soccer, lacrosse, run track, as well as participate in the Steamboat Springs Winter Sports Club for winter sports.  As a result, their circle of friends is larger and their experiences less limited.

Click here to view our Student Handbook.

Residential Houses

Elizabeth Hall houses girls and and Kakela Hall houses the boys; however a new Boys’ Residence Hall is under construction and set to open in the fall of 2010.  This new Hall follows our recipe for mountain architecture with particular attention to warm, welcoming spaces.

The Residence Halls overlook main campus, a pond and green space where we play Frisbee and occasionally gallop the horses.   Wireless Internet is available in the dorms as well along with cable TV in the student lounges.

Each house is staffed with a senior Houseparent and a residential fellow. Residential coverage is 24/7 when school is in session: the residential responsibilities are shared between the  houseparent and fellow as per our master residential schedule.

The houses have singles, doubles, and triples, small common area kitchens, washer/dryers and a lounge most often used for house meetings and free-time relaxation (TV, movies, games, etc.) Residential staff works hard to create a safe and nurturing home environment for our boarding students. The students typically feel secure and connected within our community. Our residential students form close knit and sometimes life-long relationships with each other and the residential staff.

Each house also plays an integral role in the academic lives of our residential students. Residential staff proctor evening study halls, and all houseparents serve as academic advisors along with teachers.

Meals

We don’t have a cook, we have a chef who was trained by our last chef.  He prepares three meals a day with a mid-day snack in the fall and spring during our longer academic days.  All students usually have hot lunch on campus – along with an entrée, there is usually vegetarian alternative, a salad bar, and home-made soup.  The school takes great pride in its variety of homemade, creative and nutritional meals. Day students are welcome at all meals.  Faculty, students and staff eat together and we find this fosters the strong bonds we are famous for. Students are welcome to use the Residence Hall kitchens (stoves, microwaves) to make their own snacks and many keep a refrigerator in their rooms.  Students who have to miss school due to illness have their meals brought to them in their rooms by Residence Hall staff.

The Gertrude Fetcher Library & Our Foreign Language Lab

Students. Learning. Libraries. This is the best of all worlds. Studies have shown that there is a definite positive relationship between school libraries with certain dimensions in place and student achievement. The library at LWS is always updating and revamping the book collection and the databases.  It is a quiet, comfortable place with plenty of study areas and computers.  The Zavik Learning Center is attached to the library. It features 12 workstations, a teacher station and a state-of-the-art language lab module by Sony Sans systems.  Students can learn a foreign language with the assistance of this lab – making conversation together and with their teacher .  They can also recording their own voices to check their progress.  Teachers can send different lessons to students in the same class and listen in on lessons or record them for grades.

Wireless Internet and workstations - Wireless is available in all the main buildings.  An education-based firewall protects campus internet connections with a content filter updated daily.  Students have the use of four network printers including a large color laser.  Aside from the Zavik Learning Center, an upstairs lab containing nine computers is available. In all, there are 25 workstations for student use with computer classes occasionally scheduled in the labs.  Students often do have their own laptops but they are not required.  You can contact Director of Technology, Trenia Sanford if you have questions.  See Contact Us.

Transportation

The school provides transportation to and from a variety of activities, weekly town trips, skiing/riding and training for competitive athletics. The school has a fleet of several larger people movers, vans and four-wheel drive Suburbans. Visits to doctors or other professionals in town are scheduled by Residential staff and handled by them as well.  The student handbook does allow students to have cars within certain parameters.  Drivers Education is encouraged as is a local Winter Driving School.

The Disciplinary System

This the most clearly elucidated component of “Student Life” and generally understood and accepted by all students as a base foundation.

Beyond justifying the school’s Code of Ethics (see lws-handbook-v12.pdf) the primary objectives of the disciplinary system are to assist the students in maintaining personal responsibility for their behaviors, to help them understand accountability as citizens of the school community, and to ensure that all disciplinary matters are handled in a consistent and fair manner. The system also serves to clarify issues for faculty and staff, and to support them in being the front line of policy and rule enforcement.

The school relies upon a disciplinary system that has carefully evolved over many years. The cornerstone of the school’s disciplinary procedures is the “Point System.” Basically, infractions of different rules garner a student a specified loss of points. Included with a loss of points are mandatory restrictions and community service opportunities. Residential students begin the year with 135 points (day students begin with 110), if they get to a zero or negative point balance they are facing expulsion from the school. Most typically LWS is a “two strike” school in regard to major disciplinary infractions; however, some infractions (see Student Handbook) are zero tolerance and may result in a “one-strike” expulsion.

At the beginning of each year all students are issued a lws-handbook-v12.pdf. They then meet with the Dean of Students to discuss the pertinent disciplinary issues that tend to arise during the course of a year. Each issue is specifically discussed, questions are answered, and the typical consequences for rule infractions are clearly delineated.

Significant disciplinary issues are processed through the Disciplinary Committee. The disciplinary committee is comprised of the Dean of Students (Chairman), Head of School (non-voting), several faculty members and three students. The committee is essentially a jury of peers, who process any specific information regarding an infraction within the framework of existing rules, and ultimately dole out fair, consistent and appropriate consequences.

Minor issues tend to be dealt with between the student involved and the Dean of Students. Consequences vary from minor point loss (or credit hour loss) to written apologies and/or creative solutions commensurate with the violation.