The Loomis Chaffee School

The Loomis Institute was chartered in 1874 by five siblings who had lost all their children and selflessly determined to found a school as a gift to the children of others. Since its opening in 1914, the school has offered educational opportunities for boys and girls regardless of religious or political beliefs, national origin, or financial resources. Our students welcome the challenges of Loomis' academic program, embrace opportunities to explore and pursue individual academic, athletic, artistic, and personal interests, and thrive in a community where their peers and faculty share a commitment to the best self and the common good.

Loomis' Guided Research Projects allow advanced science students to engage in sustained, significant, mentored scientific research. In this year-long, capstone program students work with a science faculty member to conduct authentic research. For a recent molecular biology project, six seniors investigated a factor associated with the progress of the autoimmune disease Multiple Sclerosis working with a Loomis faculty member and a Professor of Biology at Georgetown University. Over the duration of the year, students not only learned techniques in molecular biology and cell culture, but they also learned how to conduct hypothesis-driven research, how to design, analyze, and interpret experiments as well as how to communicate through science writing.

The Henry R. Kravis ’63 Center for Excellence in Teaching provides ongoing professional development of the Loomis faculty. Working from his deeply-held conviction that “great teachers are made, not born,” the center’s director, longtime science faculty member Scott MacClintic ’82, focuses on helping all Loomis faculty members tap into resources within the school and beyond the Island and to consider the value of both new and tried-and-true methods of educating young people. Like any excellent craftsmen, our teachers continuously strive to hone their skills, add new tools to their toolboxes, and creatively take their craft to the next level.

Unique among most of our peer schools, Loomis offers a four-year Arabic language program with a focus on Modern Standard Arabic and Levantine Colloquial Arabic (from the region including Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and the Palestinian Territories). You can supplement your language studies with an area studies course titled "Arab Culture Today: Youth Uprising," and a year or term abroad at King’s Academy in Jordan.

Our environmental sustainability program is student focused. Students investigate real problems/issues the school faces in regards to energy consumption and conservation, waste management, and water. The agricultural program involves the entire community investigating sustainable food systems and promoting working the land whether its planting and harvesting, tending to our flock of laying hens, or working in our apiary.

Since its inception, the school has adhered to and honored its founders’ wishes: to foster a lifelong zeal for learning through a rigorous and diverse curriculum and to instill an abiding respect for others predicated on the egalitarian notion that neither religion, sex, geographical origin, nor financial standing will preclude a student from enrolling in the school.

The mission of The Loomis Chaffee School is to advance the development in spirit, mind and body of boys and girls drawn from diverse cultural and social backgrounds and to inspire in them a commitment to the best self and the common good. The goal of the school’s academic program is the formation of skilled and discerning minds in preparation for higher education and lifelong learning. Through its courses and community life, Loomis Chaffee also educates its students for service in the nation and in today's global civilization. In all things, the school aims to be, as its founders intended, “a shrine from which boys and girls shall take the highest inspirations for better and grander lives.”