St. Andrew’s-Sewanee School

Description

St. Andrew’s-Sewanee School is a private, coeducational, Episcopal, day and boarding, college preparatory school. Located on a beautifully wooded and historic campus high atop the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee, St. Andrew’s-Sewanee offers students in grades 6–12 an innovative curriculum presented by a creative and engaged faculty who are dedicated to cultivating well-rounded and thoughtful human beings.

The St. Andrew’s-Sewanee School community cultivates creativity, celebrates individuality, and rejoices in the natural world. Students enjoy small classes, an award winning arts program, numerous sports and outdoor adventure opportunities, and access to the facilities and offerings of the nearby University of the South.

History

St. Andrew’s-Sewanee School is the proud inheritor of a legacy of more than 147 years of private college preparatory education in Sewanee. The school is the result of the 1981 merger of St. Andrew’s School (est. 1905) and Sewanee Academy (est. 1971). These schools were preceded by the Junior Department of the University of the South (1868-69), the Sewanee Grammar School (1869-1908), St. Mary’s School (1896-1968), and Sewanee Military Academy (1908-1971).

St. Andrew’s-Sewanee has much of the character prescribed for the University of the South by its Board of Trustees in 1857: a close relationship with the Episcopal Church; a location in the central South (the Sewanee location was said to meet the requirement of “easy and speedy access” by train); a student body drawn from a wider area than the immediate community; distance from any city in order to create its own environment; and a location in a region considered healthy because of its height above sea level, and thus freer from the yellow fever, malaria and cholera prevalent in the lowlands. These factors were principal reasons, along with munificent gifts of lands, that Sewanee was chosen as the site for the parent schools of St. Andrew’s-Sewanee.

Collectively, the predecessors of St. Andrew’s-Sewanee provided more than 250 years of education to Sewanee, to the South, and to the nation.