As part of his senior project, Nico joined Ben Toth — Dean of Academics Julie Polcrack’s husband — for a visit to the White Mountain National Forest, meeting with staff at the Pemigewasset Ranger District office. During the visit, Nico connected with specialists across a wide range of disciplines — including biology, recreation, fire management, […]
Pillars
Central to the Oliverian experience are our three pillars: adventure, stewardship, and the fine arts. Engagement in the pillars comes in the form of classes, extracurricular offerings, and all-school activities, enriching the lives of our students every day.
In many ways, these pillars are the embodiment and the expression of our Core Values, and an essential way in which students find their place in the world. Through the Arts, we explore self-expression and creativity, learning to accept and love ourselves and others, while challenging ourselves to change and grow. Through Stewardship, we explore the tension between individuality and community, giving of ourselves in service to others and to the land, and in so doing, finding our own sense of peace and fulfillment. Through adventure, we build grit and resilience, pushing through discomfort and fear to arrive at both literal and figurative mountaintops of joy. All of these experiences, taken together, make Oliverian Oliverian.
Adventure
We believe that an outdoor adventure education experience affords a powerful way to learn and grow academically, physically, and emotionally. Through our integrated outdoor education program, Oliverian students develop a better awareness of self, a deeper understanding of the world around them, and a capacity for reflective learning. Over the course of the year, students have climbed, hiked, skied, snowshoed, biked, caved, and paddled some of the best locations in New England and beyond including: Mount Moosilauke, Iron Mountain, John Wolter Trail, Wachipauka Pond, Oliverian Pond, Glencliffe Trail, Merriam Woods, Connecticut River, Lake Tarleton, Boston Montreal Trail, Flat Mountain, McCrillis Trail, Everett, Cave, VT, Schoharie Cave, NY, Howe Cave, NY, Traino Karst Preserve, NY, Camden Hill State Park,, ME, Blueberry Mountain, Moose River, ME, Waterville Valley, and Burke Mountain. With our Adventure Program, our students have hiked average elevations of 1200 feet, traveled an average of 5-6 miles per hike, and scaled some of the best rock formations this side of the White Mountains.
Stewardship
Oliverian students achieve success through stewardship by caring for our campus and by engaging in service-learning projects on a local, regional, national, and international level. Campus stewardship activities may include managing the trails and woodlands, tending to the campus chickens, helping to maintain the dormitories. Oliverian students reach out to the local community through stewardship activities such as chopping, stacking, delivering, and donating cords of wood to local families in need of heat assistance for the winter. Nationally and internationally, Oliverian students support their global community through Electives Week service-learning trips to places such as the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, and St. Croix. Stewardship at Oliverian encourages self-exploration, spirituality, character formation, and integrity by allowing students to explore their interdependent relationships with others and with the natural world. Students have engaged in approximately 5 to 6 miles of meticulous trail maintenance and cleared around 1000 square feet of brush throughout all four seasons! Our students have built outdoor classrooms in addition to maintaining our current Alex Townsend Outdoor Classroom. Our chickens certainly earn their keep as they compost, till, weed, and fertilize our garden space. This past year, we collected around 3,650 eggs from our campus fowl!
Fine Arts & Music
Our Fine Arts program offered over 35 classes this past year, providing opportunities to learn over 20 different art mediums and create hundreds of original pieces. Fine Arts Course Highlights: Comic Writing, Ceramics, Creative Movement, Fashion and Textiles, Film Production and Design, Guerilla, Filmmaking, Jewelry Making, Landscape Painting, Movies and Music, Music Appreciation, Nature Art, Painting, Portrait Drawing, Pottery, Sketchbook, Smartphone Photography, Stop Motion in Motion, Stuffed Animals and, Sewing, Video Game Design. Oliverian’s diverse studio art courses offer students of all ability and experience levels the opportunity to express themselves creatively while developing their skills and craftsmanship. Among our traditional art offerings are drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking, and photography. We offer pottery courses at varying levels, including both wheel-throwing and handbuilding. Students also enjoy a range of exciting, nontraditional courses, such as Beyond Crafts, Exploring Synesthesia, and Totally Outrageous Abstract Drawing. Oliverian’s music program is driven in large part by the interests of our many aspiring musicians. Many of our courses — Rock Band, Playing the Blues, Singer-Songwriter Coffeehouse — provide opportunities for small groups of students to work together to develop their individual skills with their instrument(s) of choice while also developing the ability to play as part of a group. Incorporated into many of these classes is the chance for students to record their own original music. This work becomes the basis for our Recording Technology class.
A Unique Approach to Teaching Science at Oliverian
December 12, 2025
In many classrooms, physics and chemistry live mostly in textbooks. In Kate’s physical science class at Oliverian, they live in gardens, kitchens, climbing walls, and workshops. Her goal is simple: help students see that science isn’t abstract, it’s something they experience every day. “My idea was to take general physical science, an intro to physics […]
Stewardship at Oliverian
October 29, 2025
On any given morning at Oliverian, you might find students knee-deep in garden beds, carving spoons in the woodshop, or clearing a trail that winds through the forest near campus. The sounds of laughter mix with the scrape of shovels and the cluck of chickens—a rhythm of work and care that defines our Stewardship program. […]
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