The stage is literally being set for Ashley Hall’s beautiful commencement ceremony scheduled for this Sunday, May 28. Steeped in beauty and tradition, the Class of 2017 will take their place as the newest members of the Ashley Hall sisterhood. Click on the button below to view the list of this year’s college acceptances.

Last Friday marked the beginning of a new Ashley Hall tradition called “The Senior Spiral Walk.” The Class of 2017 met Head of School, Jill Muti, at the Shell House where she bestowed upon them a small delicate conch shell to forever remind them of their educational journey at Ashley Hall. Each girl then went to the division where she first began at the school. Mrs. Muti and those seniors who began in EEC initiated the walk, stopping through each division to gather their classmates along the way. Each division sang a special song to honor the girls as they passed through. Then, as the entire class entered Davies Auditorium, Upper School underclassmen greeted them with the song Oh Ashley Hall. It was a beautiful way to recognize the journey of our soon-to-be graduates and to honor them at their final assembly.

Class of 2017 College Acceptances

In true Ashley Hall form, Panther Athletics experienced an extraordinarily successful spring in several areas which was celebrated at this week’s Spring Sports Award Program. An impressive season all around, eight of eleven Panther Varsity sports teams were State Champions or runner up. Including Bantam teams (grades 5 through 8) 66% of girls in our Intermediate Program and Upper School participated in athletics this academic year. PQV to all our student athletes, including the following spring team successes:

Archery, SCISA State Runner-Up | Varsity Lacrosse, SCISA State Runner-Up  
Varsity Soccer, SCISA State semi finalist and SCISA All Region Team Members and All Stars 
Varsity Track, SCISA State Runner-Up and SCISA All State and Region team members

An additional PQV goes to Elyssa Sterneck ’17 who received the Silver level Graduating Seniors Award by U.S. Figure Skating. 

Downtown flooding couldn’t dim the spotlight on Senior Project presentations this past Monday. Presented in morning and afternoon rotations in locations spread throughout campus, these nine girls confidently and concisely presented a year’s worth of research in 30 minute time frames offering audience members an in-depth look at the student’s topic of choice. It was their time to shine and shine they did!

Completely student-directed with one-on-one faculty mentoring and ongoing support, Senior Project is a synthesis of intense year-long research, critical thinking, and community outreach allowing students to delve deeper into a specific topic of interest. The participants are selected through a competitive application process the prior spring and the girls begin researching their proposed topic over the summer months. This research then fuels their work over the course of the school year as projects evolve.

The Senior Project program is one more way, Ashley Hall seeks to provide each girl with a head start on the hard work of preparing her for the college experience and the journey beyond.

PQV to this year’s participants:
Carter Bitter | Sex Trafficking in the United States  
Elise Coleman | African American Masculinity: The Process of Change
Erin Goedecke | Sports Injuries in Adolescents and How to Prevent Them
Anna Hildebrand | Malnutrition: More Than a Third World Pandemic
Lauren Marshall | How Do We React To Trauma 
Emily Ockerman | Getting to the Root of the Problem: The Way America Grows Crops and How it Harms it’s Environment, People, and Culture
Elizabeth Puckette |  Charleston: Beyond the Brochure
Zoe Watson | Diverse Representation in the Media
Sophia Yao | Cyber Security

Last week’s severe weather created challenges for many in the Charleston area, including Ashley Hall’s 7th grade girls participating in Model United Nations (UN). Scheduled to leave early Wednesday morning for the conference in Black Mountain, North Carolina, the trip was sadly canceled due to high wind advisories in the mountains for high profile vehicles, aka buses! With student safety front of mind, faculty quickly adjusted plans to hold our own Model UN on campus. “It was a true PQV moment,” said Upper School Director, Mary Schweers. “Our faculty, and students, rose to the occasion not losing this learning opportunity. Everyone was terrific and seemed to thoroughly enjoy the day.”

Inspired by our Hallmark, Worldly, Ashley Hall is a proud participant in the Model UN program. This program offers an authentic simulation of the UN General Assembly which introduces students to the world of diplomacy, negotiation, and decision making.

Over the course of several months, the girls identified a third-world issue, conducted thorough research on this issue, created an informational booth display, and presented a bill for funding to the UN General Student Assembly. In lieu of sharing their work with other schools, the students opened their booths and made formal presentations to members of the 8th grade and also their little sisters. PQV to these true global citizens!

The Ashley Hall Performing Arts Department presents

The Other Side of Love: An Evening of One Acts 

The program includes:

The world premiere of an original play by Mady Thompson ’18!

Ludlow Fair by Lanford Wilson
Lanford Wilson’s one act play, Ludlow Fair, gives us a glimpse of Rachel and Agnes. The two roommates attempt to co-exist in their cramped New York City, yet Rachel and Agnes could not be more different. Rachel is beautiful, dramatic and a serial dater; Agnes is practical, sarcastic and completely clueless when it comes to men. Both are extremely lonely and hopeless romantics, and over the course of one poignant evening, we learn that Rachel and Agnes may need each other more than they realize.

Nine, an abridged version of the Tony Award-winning musical

Nine is based on the Italian film maker Federico Fellini’s semi-autobiographical film 8 1/2. The show concerns the film director Guido Contini who is facing a midlife crisis as he struggles to put together his latest film.

Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, giants of American musical theater, created legendary Broadway musicals in the 1940s and 50s and initiated what is widely considered the “golden age” of musical theater. The composers were geniuses at weaving challenging thematic issues into romantic love stories shared through dance and song. Consider The King and I, Oklahoma, South Pacific, and Carousel, all musical theater chestnuts that carry a powerful social commentary punch.

With their original production of Café Carousel, the Ashley Hall Theater Department, under the direction of Director Maida Libkin, created an evening to celebrate and examine the work Rodgers and Hammerstein through the lens of social justice. The team crafted the show’s poignant narrative through meticulous research of the musicals and by working closely with Upper School humanities faculty who teach classes such as Human Rights and International Law, American Studies, and Race Class, and Gender for historical and social context. Café Carousel proved enormously successful giving audiences of all ages much to think about.

Taking their efforts one step further, the Café Carousel cast and crew generously donated a portion of ticket sales, $2,000, to the local Charleston non-profit, My Sister’s House, which provides services and resources to empower victims of domestic violence and their children to live free of abuse. Brava to all!