Seventy-Five Summers

By Chris Adams, Director of Communications and Marketing

Cardigan’s Summer Session has long offered young people the best of summer—adventure, community, and the simple magic of life by the lake. But as we celebrate its seventy-fifth anniversary, it is worth reflecting on what has made the program endure. Since its earliest days, Summer Session has been a place of transformation, where students discover new interests, new confidence, and a lasting connection to the program’s guiding ethos: Try Something New.

A Parent’s Perspective

She came home with a sun-tanned smile, a new interest in yoga, and a bamboo fan, a parting gift from a new best friend from Thailand. My daughter had just finished her second summer at Cardigan, and as she tumbled through the door—talking a mile a minute about Travelling the World in A Book and a trip to Canobie Lake Park—I quickly understood what generations of Cardigan families already knew: Summer Session isn’t summer camp. Well, it is, but it’s quite a bit more than that. It’s a joyful, intentional extension of everything Cardigan stands for.

As it turned out, my daughter’s transformation over those summers also made a lasting impression on me. I first saw the magic of Cardigan—the blend of purpose, personal growth, and fun that defines this place. A few years later, when a chance to join Cardigan as the director of communications and marketing arose, I jumped at the opportunity.

The summer of 2025 marked the 75th anniversary of a program that began quietly in 1951 with five students and a couple of teachers and has grown into one of Cardigan’s most enduring traditions. It’s an experience that has helped shape the lives of thousands of young people and, in many cases, those of the faculty and staff too.

Humble Beginnings

The summer of 1951 began with five boys—Patrick Finney, Thomas Anglem, Leonard Ainsworth, James Cleary, and Colton Ryan—who spent their mornings in the Lodge on Canaan Street studying English with Ms. Dorothy Emerson and mathematics with Mr. John Heagy. Afternoons were spent outdoors hiking the local trails, playing baseball in the shadow of Mt. Cardigan, and canoeing on the lake when the weather allowed. Meals were simple, classrooms informal, and recreation improvised (puppeteering substituted for outdoor activities during inclement weather). Yet something meaningful took root that first summer: a belief that a summer education, at its best, is about curiosity, adventure, and community.

For Cardigan’s founders, the idea of a summer program was both visionary and practical: to provide an enriching experience for boys during the quiet months while keeping the school’s best teachers—and the kitchen staff—employed. From the beginning, the trustees were clear that Summer Session should not be a camp in the traditional sense, but a “summer school which would take advantage of the outdoor facilities at Canaan Street Lake.” The daily schedule would be the same as the academic year—classes in the morning and activities in the afternoon, much like it still is today.

By 1955, Summer Session had moved from the Lodge on Canaan Street to its current location on The Point, where more than 30 boys lived in the Mansion (now known as Clark-Morgan Hall) and attended an expanded list of classes that included history and foreign languages.

Becoming Coed: Welcoming Girls

Girls first attended Summer Session as day students as early as 1963, but Cardigan took a defining step forward a few years later by inviting girls to enroll as boarding students in 1970. It was a bold and forward-looking decision at a time when coeducation in a boarding environment was still uncommon—nearby Dartmouth College would not welcome women until two years later in 1972. The inclusion of girls helped to establish Cardigan as a leader in education while making Summer Session stronger, more dynamic, and more inclusive.

That decision reflected Cardigan’s confidence in its mission—to understand, educate, and challenge middle school students through shared experiences as they prepare for lives beyond The Point—and it remains as perhaps the program’s most significant milestone.

Trying Something New

Our community uses a vocabulary rich in what I call Cardiganisms—phrases that have grown to entrench themselves in our shared experience, like Help the Other Fella and Lift While You Climb. But there is at least one that was born during Summer Session: Try Something New. First heard on The Point maybe 30 years ago, those three words have evolved into the ethos of Summer Session (and have even graced more than one camp t-shirt along the way).

No one embodies that spirit more fully than Gus Means, a longtime Summer Session faculty member and the current activities director. Mr. Means arrived on The Point nearly three decades ago as a young teacher and never really left.

“It’s my mantra during the summer,” Mr. Means says, “I constantly urge the kids to try something new and sign up for an activity they have never done before, possibly discovering a new interest, passion, or talent. The only way to do that is by taking that first step.”

Mr. Means’ daily activities have become a signature feature of Summer Session—a blend of athletics, arts, fun, and adventure that ensures every child finds something to love and something to learn. Whether it’s yoga, martial arts, kayaking, or mountain biking, students come to understand that curiosity is its own reward.

Going Global

Like Cardigan itself, Summer Session has grown stronger by becoming more intentionally global—welcoming students from a wider range of backgrounds, cultures, and home languages, and learning how to support that growth with care and planning.

International students have been part of the Summer Session story for more than 50 years. As early as the 1970s, students arrived from places as varied as Belgium, Brazil, Canada, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, and Switzerland—an early hint of the cultural diversity the program could achieve. By the early 1990s, that hint had grown into a defining feature. International enrollment had risen to 30 students, shaping classroom conversations, dorm life, and the everyday rhythms of campus in ways that made the program richer—and more complex.

It was during that period that then-Director Mr. Jim Burnett P’95, GP’25 recognized an important truth: welcoming students from around the world is not simply a matter of admissions; it is a matter of infrastructure. He was the first to speak directly about adding specific staff positions to properly accommodate a growing international community—support roles that could help with communication, logistics, student experience, and the small, essential details that make a new place feel navigable and safe.

“I tried to make sure everyone felt welcome,” he recalls. “I learned everyone’s names and made sure they learned what was called the Cardigan Way. It was amazing to me how most of the kids fell into the flow. Cardigan was, and is, a good school, and we helped a lot of kids. I’m always impressed by Cardigan and proud to have been a part of it.”

Today, roughly 35% of students arrive on registration day from outside the United States. China, South Korea, Mexico, Spain, Japan, and the Dominican Republic are the most common nations recently, and as many as 15 countries are represented during most summers. The numbers matter, of course—but what matters more is what those numbers represent: a summer community where friendships cross borders, where a lunch table or dorm room can host a geography lesson, and where Try Something New sometimes begins with something as simple as speaking up in a new language, in a new place, among new friends.

Learning by Doing

Summer Session feels unmistakably “Cardigan” because its teaching philosophy is, in many ways, the same. Middle-school learning is at its best when it doesn’t live only in a notebook—it sticks when students can connect a new concept in their head with a project that engages their hands. That’s why our mornings are designed around small classes, close faculty attention, and an approach that rewards curiosity and experimentation.

Of course, there are the same steady, familiar anchors that defined those first years in the 1950s: core offerings in math, reading, writing, and world languages. But walk across campus on any given summer morning, and you’ll see the Cardigan difference in motion—students launching model rockets, flying drones, investigating a mock crime scene, acting or dancing on the Humann Theatre stage, or leaving fresh chalk art along the paths as if the campus itself is part classroom, part canvas. This is education with sleeves rolled up: design thinking alongside drafting, problem-solving alongside prototyping, reflection alongside revision.

Taking the Lead

One of Cardigan’s enduring strengths is the way our oldest students step naturally into leadership, setting the standard for younger boys—and Summer Session reflects that spirit in full. In 2003, Tom Pastore, the school’s director of studies at the time, first suggested adding leadership programming (consisting of guest speakers and group discussions) into the summer curriculum. Then in 2017, Devon Rinkin P’28 helped to refine that simple idea into a comprehensive program with a powerful goal: invite students who have previously lived the Summer Session experience to help shape it for others while also instilling in them a skillset to become confident, compassionate, and inclusive leaders.

Today, the Leadership Program is a distinctive offering for rising 10th-grade students who have previously attended Summer Session and are ready to expand the breadth and depth of their experience—trying something new, even if they have attended Summer Session for multiple years. Enrollment is deliberately limited to a cohesive cohort of 10 to 12 students—intentionally small so that each leader can build confidence, strengthen real-world skills, and form lasting bonds with peers.

The curriculum blends interactive seminars presented by both faculty members and guest speakers, leadership challenges and games, and opportunities to guide younger students. Beyond the classroom, student leaders are woven into the everyday fabric of the summer. They work alongside faculty in mentoring younger students, assist with activities in ways that elevate inclusion and joy, and help reinforce routines that keep the summer running smoothly. Each leader is encouraged not just to learn about leadership, but to live it—modeling the behavior, respect, and enthusiasm that define our school culture and ethos.

Attracting Students (and Teachers!)

Though originally conceived in part to retain important teachers and keep the kitchen staff busy, as Summer Session matured, it did much more than fill the months between academic years—it has introduced countless students, families, and teachers to our community and the Cardigan Way.

Many families first encounter Cardigan through Summer Session.  A student—and his parents—fall in love with the campus, the lake, and the sense of belonging—and by August, he’s applying for the academic year. The opposite is also true. Many boys already accepted to the academic year program will choose to attend Summer Session in order to acclimatize to the culture and structure of Cardigan.

The same is true for teachers. While the nucleus of the Summer Session faculty may be borrowed from the academic year program or longtime returning teachers from other schools, Summer Session has long been a place where educators discover the joy of teaching in Cardigan’s environment—hands-on, outdoors, and deeply relational. Several of the school’s best-known faculty members first came to campus for a summer job and stayed for a career. The Summer Session has become both a training ground and a proving ground for the kind of teaching that defines Cardigan’s culture.

Traditions That Endure

Much has changed since that first summer—enrollment has grown from five local boys to more than 150 girls and boys from all over the world—but the essence of the Summer Session experience remains surprisingly constant, a continuum from year to year supported by intentional activities, games, meals, trips, and traditions.

Mornings still begin with a chilly, often foggy walk to the waterfront for Polar Bear. Evenings close with a Green vs. White competition or a few more minutes of laughter under the glow of the setting sun on Marrion Field. Sprinkled throughout each week are field trips and theme dinners, performance nights and guest speakers, campfires and s’mores—each a layer that adds richness to a summer on The Point.

Some traditions are as old as Cardigan itself; all students hike to the summit of Mt. Cardigan within the first few days of summer. Others have been added along the way, born from the imagination of students and teachers alike; a new highlight is International Cultures Night—a celebration of the global community that Summer Session has become—that includes dress, displays, and food.

Every summer, of course, closes with the Great Race. A celebration of the athletic, the silly, and everything in between, the race is a Green vs. White relay race, beginning at the victory bell in front of Clark-Morgan, weaving around campus—by land and water—and finishing at Cotting Rock overlooking Marrion Field. 

Looking Ahead: The Next Seventy-Five

The spirit of Try Something New is as relevant to our summers now as it was 30 years ago. Summer Session will continue to evolve—integrating new technologies, new courses, new activities, and new calendars to fit the increasingly diverse ambitions and busy schedules of today’s students. (Summer Session 2026 will return to two short sessions and/or one long session that was popular a few years ago.)

At the same time, Cardigan has a goal to share our campus—and our vibe, as the students say—for more uses beyond our traditional Summer Session (and our partnership with Cardigan Mountain Lacrosse Camp, which will celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2027). This past August, Cardigan hosted our first instructional mountain biking camp and there are plans to continue in 2026. The school also partnered with Jackson Hole Outdoor Leadership Institute and Northeast Mountaineering to host wilderness first aid and wilderness first responder classes on campus. Each reflect a spirit that embodies summer on The Point: a blend of purposeful learning and new adventures set on a lakefront campus alive with possibility.

Where Journeys Begin

More than a decade has passed since my daughter was a Summer Session student, and while those summers—and the years since—were fleeting, the impressions made are indelible. This past summer, she returned to The Point as a teaching apprentice, one of 10 Cardigan and Summer Session alumni who served on the 2025 Summer Session faculty.

She’ll soon be a senior in college and is making plans to travel the world by herself in pursuit of her family’s history—Greece, Italy, maybe England and Scotland—only this time it’s not in a book, it’s for real, and I can’t help but think that idea was born a decade ago in a classroom on The Point.

This July, more than 150 students will arrive for registration day—many for the first time, and each with their own hopes and hesitations. Each of them will find the same thing those five boys found in 1951: a place that invites curiosity, discovery, and community. A place that says, in every possible way: Try Something New.