Outreach and Inreach

Through internship opportunities and external summer enrichment experiences, Columbus Academy students engage in meaningful endeavors with problem solving, critical thinking and leadership opportunities that not only cultivate their own interests, but also deepen connections, partnerships and engagement within our local community. Click here for more information about Columbus Academy's Internship Program.

Columbus Academy also allows community members to use Columbus Academy resources to build meaningful programs that model the goals of Columbus Academy's Strategic Vision 2017 - Curricular Innovation, Ethics and Character Formation, Student Flourishing, Service Learning and Campus as a Living Classroom.

In one example of this, Susan Culler Soden, parent of alumna Blair Soden '02 and an active Columbus Academy grandparent, began a new program on campus called Memory Bears. In 2004, after the passing of Susan's only sibling from a brain tumor, a hospice group in Pennsylvania made her a stuffed teddy bear out of clothing from her loved one, and the thoughtful gesture sparked her idea for Memory Bears. Now, 14 years later, Susan continues to lend a helping hand to those who have recently lost loved ones to help comfort many families and children while also providing a lasting memory. The program started on Sept. 14 in the middle-school makerspace, and has since had two days where Susan and middle school teacher Michelle Platt have led a group of middle-schoolers in lending a helping hand of their own during their activity time on "E" days. The students have learned to alter and cut fabric in the shape of a teddy bear, before stuffing and then sewing it shut for a finished product. The program will continue throughout the year in the middle school, while the upper-schoolers are also welcome to help sew, stuff and cut fabric for the bears on Wednesday afternoons in the upper-school makerspace.