Andrew Wooden New Head of School for Marymount

Marymount of Santa Barbara, one of Santa Barbara’s premiere pre-K through 8th grade independent schools, proudly announces Mr. Andrew Wooden as its new Head of School effective July 1, 2011.

Wooden’s appointment comes as the result of an exhaustive national and international Head Search conducted by Carney, Sandoe and Associates, based in Boston, Massachusetts.

“Andrew Wooden’s extraordinary qualifications and skills established him as the clear choice for Marymount’s next Head of School. We are excited to have Andrew’s expertise and experience in helping Marymount advance to even higher levels of success,” says Kristin Linehan, President of Marymount Board of Trustees. “It is a rare and remarkable event to be able to recruit this caliber of educator and leader to Santa Barbara. We could not be more thrilled.”

On his decision to become Marymount’s new Head of School, Wooden remarked, “Over the span of my career I have visited close to 250 schools nationally and internationally, and Marymount has the most compelling combination of bright, motivated, polite children, talented and dedicated teachers, caring and supportive parents, a preparatory program that is academically challenging while personally nurturing, on one of the most beautiful campuses in the world. I am honored to be Head of such an excellent school.”

Wooden replaces Deborah David, who has led Marymount’s academic programs to achieving two thirds of its students scoring in the 95%+ percentile in the standardized ERB (Educational Record Bureau) tests, resulting in a record breaking number of invitations to join the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth. David is relocating to Los Angeles, CA.

Wooden brings an extraordinary background of skills and experience to this position, including:

• Choate–Rosemary Hall – Mr. Wooden oversaw Admissions and sat on the Senior Dean’s Council at this prestigious private, college-preparatory, boarding school located in Wallingford, Connecticut. Choate is world renown for its high level curriculum and boasts graduates: John F. Kennedy, Adlai Stevenson, Paul Mellon, Glenn Close, Michael Douglas, Robert Mosbacher, Ali McGraw, and Paul Giamatti.
• The Bosque School – Andrew and Molly Wooden helped build Albuquerque’s newest independent college preparatory school. Mr. Wooden oversaw the development of its 145-acre campus in Albuquerque New Mexico with 560 students, a long-term endowment and rigorous academic and fine arts program. Bosque has become one of the premiere schools in the Southwest.
• St. James Episcopal School – Most recently, Mr. Wooden has served as the Interim Head of School at this highly regarded school in Los Angeles, California.
• University of Maine – Bachelor of Arts
• Yale Divinity School – Masters of Religion
• Yale Divinity School – Library-Research Associate
• Berkeley Divinity School at Yale – Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters

Marymount is a non-denominational pre-K through 8th grade school located for 72 years on its beautiful campus in Santa Barbara’s Riviera neighborhood. Known for its unique emphasis on challenging students academically while fulfilling their moral, physical and creative potential, Marymount proudly recognizes its students’ record of outstanding achievement at the schools attended after graduation. Marymount sends its graduates to the best of the public school programs in the Santa Barbara area as well as top U.S. prep schools such as Cate, Thatcher, Deerfield, Miss Porter’s, Phillips Andover, Phillips Exeter, and St. Paul’s School, among others, and then onto the nation’s most selective universities, including Brown, Stanford, Princeton, Yale, Vassar, Harvard and Cornell.

To learn more about Marymount and meet Andrew Wooden, please contact Hilary Doubleday (805-455-5124) to arrange an interview between 8:00am and 12:30pm on January 11, 2001 or plan to attend Marymount’s Open House on January 30 at 1pm on its Riviera campus.