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Support for Avenues’ entire system of schools will be housed at headquarters.
About Avenues
Our Headquarters Function
In March 2011, Avenues will open its headquarters in New York City, a 10,000-square-foot space at 11 East 26th Street. In addition to serving as the admissions and start-up offices for the Chelsea campus, this is where central and support functions for Avenues’ system of schools will develop and be housed.
One of the advantages of a system of schools (versus a single-site school) is that certain core competencies can be built up at a system level that would be economically difficult, or even impossible, for a single school to develop. These provide meaningful benefits to both students and faculty. Here are three examples of the value of a headquarters (HQ) function:
1. Subject Area Expertise and Support.
Most schools have department chairs, teachers who double as coordinators of subject areas such as history or mathematics. Avenues will do the same, but these campus-based chairs will, over time, be supported by full-time departmental experts at the HQ level. For example, HQ will have a system-wide expert on languages who will assist each school in selecting its language faculty; coordinate the selection of language courseware; conduct the professional development and training programs for language faculty worldwide; generally stay abreast of cutting-edge work in language acquisition; and conduct on-going research and development on language studies. Each discipline—mathematics, the World Course, science, early childhood education, the arts, fitness and athletics, and so forth—will have a similar system-wide position.
2. College Counseling and College Relations.
Avenues will build a two-part college counseling and admission function. As with every top school, there will be on-site college counseling for all Upper School students. In addition, there will be an HQ function related to college counseling and college/university relations. This team, which will be headed by someone who has previously held a senior post in the admissions function of a top college or university, will provide advice and support to all on-campus college counseling teams. Equally important, HQ staff will meet with senior admissions officials at the world’s top colleges and universities both to stay up-to-date on what each institution offers and to ensure that these admissions offices know the attributes of an Avenues graduate. Few single-site schools are able to support such wide coverage of higher education options and maintain research about them.
3. Study Abroad.
Study abroad capabilities will be housed at HQ. This team will develop all summer abroad studies programs (first in programs supervised out of New York and later in programs offered at other Avenues’ campuses). It will also design and coordinate the semester abroad programs. A core objective of this group will be to ensure that every Avenues student has, during the course of her middle and upper school years, multiple overseas opportunities that are highly integrated into her “home campus” curriculum.
These capabilities will expand with each campus opened and over time will become a uniquely powerful part of the quality of an Avenues education.