campaign priority

Open Webb
to the World

Goal

$100 Million +

Goal: $100 million+

Our goal is bold and ambitious. We must dramatically increase financial aid endowment to ensure Webb can enroll and support every student with the drive to succeed and passion to contribute to our schools. With these resources secured, Webb will never again be forced to turn away any student or family because of economic circumstances (theirs or ours).

Integral to this special initiative, Webb will significantly expand student and faculty diversity and these resources available to support this work. Every student, family, faculty and staff member who seeks a place and sense of belonging here will find it in our community.

We will substantially increase our endowment for student financial aid, diversity/equity/inclusion programs, and faculty support by an additional $100 million as a result of The Centennial Campaign. Once fully realized, an active endowment of this size would provide funding each year to the school in perpetuity—with the ability to grow in size over time.

Start Something at Webb: A Financial Aid Endowment Fund

Start something at Webb and make a difference. Establish a named endowed fund for financial aid by making a current or planned gift. You can help ensure no student or family misses out on a Webb education because of financial circumstances.  Funds may begin with a pledge of $100,000 or reach to $5 million or more.

32%

Webb offers financial aid to more than 32 percent of the student body

— a higher percentage and more total aid in dollars than all other prominent boarding schools in our region, and on par with some eastern boarding schools with much larger endowments than Webb.

Foster Academic Innovation

campaign priority – learn more

Transform Our Campus Home

campaign priority – learn more

the

impact

OF GIVING

The Science of Unbounded Thinking

Lisa Nacionales

Science Chair

“While we may not be able to conceive of the global problems our students will face in the future, we do know that the solutions will be cross-disciplinary and rooted in science, and so we are constantly evolving our curriculum to engage students in the scientific process, to reward academic risk taking, and to think in global, ethical, and inclusive ways.”

You will face problems for which you are unprepared, head-on. Discovery is a series of actions, not a theoretical process. Such ideas are embedded in the ethos of our school community. And they are embedded in the work of science.

Interestingly, a giant of science at Webb, and beyond it, Ray Alf was offered his first contract by Thompson Webb to teach biology, a job for which he was completely unprepared. In fact, he had not taken a single course in biology at Doane College, where he studied.

The summer before Alf was to begin, he found himself in Boulder, Colorado auditing courses in botany and invertebrate zoology. Though only auditing, Alf did the lab work and completed the exams, but received no college credit. However, by September was prepared to start his work at Webb.

Webb has always been peopled with teaching giants. Today, the Science Department is led by Lisa Nacionales, a brilliant teacher and academic role model, as well as an outdoor adventurer, rock climber and certified wilderness first responder (WFR). Nacionales joined Webb in 2012 and was elevated to department chair in 2018. Her department has forged one-of-a-kind academic partnerships with faculty at Harvey Mudd College, Pomona College, UC Riverside and Keck Graduate Institute.

“We have been fortunate to have cutting edge lab spaces that inspire creativity, to give students opportunities to do science outside of the classroom, to create partnerships with colleges and other institutions, and to provide support and growth opportunities for our passionate science educators,” Nacionales said.

Through Webb’s research-focused program, students learn to critically evaluate new scientific information as it emerges, ask questions, generate solutions to problems, and to find meaningful and culturally relevant connections between science and their lives.

Establish a five-year leadership pledge…

Provide a leadership capital gift to a special project…

Provide a lead gift to new academic building or renewed space…

Establish and name an endowed fund for a special project…

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