In late May, an exciting delivery was made to the Richard R. Steiner Campus building site: 1.72 million pounds of trusses, joists, and other materials that will frame the state-of-the-art spaces where students will engage in the transformational learning that Rowland Hall is known for.

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For months, the site has been a bustle of activity as crew members cleared the land and poured the foundation of Rowland Hall’s new Middle School, Upper School, athletic complex, and performing arts center. And while the community is well aware of this work, its location below the ground level of the McCarthey Campus has made it hard to get a sense of progress. This summer, though, as the recently delivered materials are joined to steel beams and the Steiner Campus truly rises, it will be clear: a new chapter is beginning at Rowland Hall.

“This is nothing short of a major historical moment for the school,” said Head of School Mick Gee. “And it’s been a long time coming.”

The school is in the great shape it’s in now because of its history ... and this is the next step: setting the school up for a bright and successful future.—Head of School Mick Gee

As Rowland Hall’s 20th head of school, Mick has spent much of his first five years (he’ll celebrate his fifth anniversary on July 1) fulfilling the school’s goal to reunite students at one location for the first time in more than four decades. And while Mick’s headship will forever be tied to this moment, he sees himself as one of many stewards who made the Steiner Campus possible—a guardian of this moment in Rowland Hall history.

“The school is in the great shape it’s in now because of its history,” said Mick. “At the moments when it was needed, leaders of the school made the decision to move campuses, expand, and purchase land. That’s why we are where we are, and this is the next step: setting the school up for a bright and successful future.”

While Rowland Hall’s one-campus master plan was unveiled in 2007, the campus’s soccer fields were the only piece of that plan to be completed between that year and 2020, when Mick joined the community and inherited a phased approach to the new campus: to first build a new Middle School and gym, then, in the following years, an Upper School with a performing arts center and gym. It wasn’t long into Mick’s tenure, though—and particularly when he began working on the school’s newest strategic priorities—that he began to ask questions that shaped the campus that’s rising today.

“They were beautiful but conventional spaces,” Mick remembered of the Middle School building plan. “And they didn’t factor in areas that a school of our stature should be offering,” such as research labs and maker’s spaces. Mick was also concerned, based on soaring construction escalation costs, about the affordability of the project. He thought, “It’s a question if we can afford it now; it’s certainly a question if we can afford it in five or ten years’ time. It seemed pretty high risk to delay much further.” So Mick went to the Board of Trustees and asked: Can we instead build everything we need all at once?

“The board was excited to consider that,” he remembered. “There was strong leadership in terms of being flexible and considering all our options, like financing.” In March 2022, the board voted on the strategic use of debt and an elevated capital campaign to allow Rowland Hall to build all facilities at once and, said Mick, allow “many more students to experience the new building on a much sooner timeframe.”

Mick has always been clear that while the Steiner Campus’s state-of-the-art facilities are themselves exciting, what’s most important is the transformational learning they’ll make possible. From flexible-use classrooms to maker and community spaces, the Steiner Campus was thoughtfully designed to meet the needs of students, both today and in the future, and to support Rowland Hall’s newest strategic vision, another area of focus during Mick’s first five years.

While Mick’s first year was unexpectedly and largely defined by COVID-19, he also spent much of that time thinking about Rowland Hall’s vision for the foreseeable future. Mick knew he would need to lead the charge for a fresh strategic plan, following the completion of Rowland Hall’s 2014–2019 iteration. By fall 2021, he had established a Strategic Planning Task Force comprised of faculty, staff, and trustees, which was asked to identify both a strategic vision and the priorities that would bring that vision to life. He asked the group to think big.

“We didn’t want to set the bar too low—it was all about setting the bar as high as it can be and having a vision that has meaning for our students when they leave here,” said Mick.

The vision borne of that work, Developing People the World Needs, is definitely a high bar, and it’s had a big impact. Since its launch in spring 2022, that vision, and the four priorities driving it, have helped Rowland Hall further stand out as a top school nationally—one that’s redefining what education looks like by creating life-changing programs that prepare students to be critical, creative thinkers and communicators.

Perhaps the most inspiring outcome of this strategic work is tied to faculty’s enthusiastic response to the call to design authentic learning experiences, and to seek out opportunities for students to work on solutions to the world’s hardest problems. This is the kind of learning that most inspires students, and it’s changing the conversation around what learners of all ages are capable of. Today, Rowland Hall students are engaged in more hands-on work than ever before (impressive, considering the school’s history with this kind of learning), and our oldest students capping off their high school experiences in truly impactful ways, including presenting original work at national conferences and publishing research in academic journals.

We’re getting a reputation nationally in that area, our students producing real work and creating and advancing knowledge.—Head of School Mick Gee

“We’re getting a reputation nationally in that area, our students producing real work and creating and advancing knowledge,” said Mick. “That’s something we don’t always see high school students doing and think is not possible, and that’s not the case.”

Proving students’ capabilities has been a major part of Mick’s career. A former science teacher who’s worked with students in the UK and the US, Mick has seen firsthand how students benefit when teachers go beyond just teaching subjects like science, English, history, and math, to teaching students to see themselves as scientists, writers, historians, and mathematicians. It’s an approach that engages students, and gives them permission to follow their own interests, explore deeply, see themselves as capable contributors, and find meaning in their studies.

“Students want to know why they’re learning something, why it matters,” said Mick. “I think that’s a good thing.”

Making space for deeper learning is also allowing Rowland Hall to redefine what academic rigor means, particularly in the independent school space, and to prove this doesn’t mean sacrificing high quality or challenging academics.

“Rigor is often equated with volume and speed,” said Mick. “Our Advanced Research classes are our most rigorous, but they’re not focused on volume and speed. Depth and understanding define those courses—that’s more rigorous and less stressful. Students are working at their own pace, with outside mentors. They’re creating final projects that are presented to experts in the field. They do all that at a level that shocks people.”

As a result, Rowland Hall’s program has been touted widely and is gaining prominence as student achievements are highlighted in local and national publications, faculty and staff are sought out as regional and national resources, and our vision is shared among independent schools (consultant Tim Fish, former chief innovation officer at the National Association of Independent Schools, often uses Rowland Hall’s strategic work as an example of a clear, meaningful vision). And as the school’s reputation is growing, so is the community.

“The substance of doing real work and kids having these experiences is driving people here,” said Mick. This includes faculty and staff who seek out, and will even wait for, opportunities to work at Rowland Hall, as well as families—the school just reported one of our highest enrollment cohorts ever for 2025–2026, including our largest incoming ninth-grade class. It’s an exciting indicator of how, five years into his headship and with the support of the community, Mick has masterfully guided Rowland Hall through a period of transition and growth, defining a clear vision and a commitment to transformational learning that’s actively shaping what is possible in education.

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