Rivermont Collegiate invites the public to join its 140th birthday celebration from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 21.
A special ceremony will take place at 10:30 a.m. when the Joseph Bettendorf Mansion – with the Bettendorf family’s blessing – will be renamed St. Katharine’s Hall. The new name is a tribute to Rivermont’s origin in 1884 as St. Katharine’s School, which was a boarding and day school for girls.
The public will be able to participate in various activities at both 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. A complimentary Estate and Planned Giving Strategy Review will be held in the mansion conference room. A school history session will take place in the mansion’s reading room while a mansion and campus tour will cover the grounds.
Each activity will be around a half hour. At noon, a birthday cake cutting will mark the school’s milestone birthday.
Cant-miss celebration
“This really is a celebration you don’t want to miss,” Headmaster Max Roach said in a news release. “This is a moment for us to shine a light on Rivermont and our incredible faculty who help students from preschool to grade 12 excel. We’re excited to host alumni, students, families and the community at this event. It really is a moment for Rivermont to shine and to showcase the school’s illustrious history.”
Through the years, Rivermont has evolved in many ways. It became becoming co-educational with both girls and boys, transformed from episcopal to nonsectarian, and reintroduced its boarding program for domestic and international students. Through those changes, Rivermont now is ranked as the No. 1 college prep school in Iowa. It’s alsod among the top 10% in the country, according to Niche.com.
“When you think back to 1884, that’s less than 20 years after the Civil War and prior to both world wars,” Leigh Ann Schroeder, curriculum coordinator and history teacher, said in the release.
“The first car wasn’t even patented until two years later in 1886. The first public film ‘Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory’ by the Lumière brothers didn’t even happen until 1895. It’s fascinating to think about how much our world, our perspectives and what we know has changed since 1884. It’s also rather comforting to think this school has been teaching students and helping them grow into intelligent, curious adults through all those changes. There’s a comfort in the constants that are the pursuit of knowledge and a curiosity about the world around us.”
For more information about Rivermont Collegiate, visit rivermontcollegiate.org.
