The history of this school traces hands-on educational programs to the 1930s, but it was in the early '70s--with the development of adventure-based off-campus programs and language immmersion opportunities in Spain and France--that we claimed leadership in "experiential education," and began to speak of "the Proctor experience." The irony of "the Proctor experience," of course, is that each student creates her own; it is anything but standardized or uniform. 



But experiential education is only one dimension of the Proctor experience. The latter concept has less to do with "hands-on" methodologies, but is about a kind of relationship between teachers and students. It is a set of relationships that result from an extraordinary fact: our 360 students attend a school with 72 teaching faculty. That's a ratio of 5 students per teacher, and that ratio is key to the Proctor experience. 




It's no secret that low faculty-student ratios work. So why doesn't every school offer it? Well, it's very expensive. This fact demands two things: 1. We need to deliver something very special (the experience), and, 2. We need to resist prohibitive tuition costs by asking constituents for financial gifts. The annual fund makes up the difference between revenue sources (such as tuition, income from investments and various fees) and the cost of offering the Proctor experience. 



The annual fund is critical! The fiscal year runs from July 1 through June 30, so anyone motivated to support the Proctor experience may do so now! At this moment, we have $1,065,276 in gifts and pledges toward our goal of $1,125,000. So close, yet so little time! Join the 700-plus friends of Proctor who are making this goal a reality.