Tucker Foehl, assistant head for strategic programs, is trying to enlarge the school by forming a new school website, marketing the school to families and students, and expanding the school’s summer program.
One of Foehl’s most important jobs is creating a new school website.
He is working with Digital Deployment, a company that is run by Carsen Anthonisen and his daughter Haley, ‘07. Foehl said he and the company have pinpointed crucial dates for design, discovery, execution and launch.
“It will highlight and capture our school,” Foehl said.
The website will be launched in the late spring.
Foehl is also working on marketing the school through preview days. These include the pre-kindergarten and kindergarten and high-school preview days, as well as the transition day for eighth graders becoming freshmen.
“This year we have a 170 percent increase in applications for the high school from outside applicants, for ninth grade,” Foehl said.
Foehl is helping to market the preview days to people outside of the school.
Foehl works with the marketing committee of the Board of Trustees, as well as an internal marketing group. He meets with the internal marketing group “roughly every two weeks,” and the Board marketing committee once a month.
He leads the internal marketing group which includes himself, Julie Nelson, director of communications, and people in the development, communications, admissions, alumni and technology offices.
On the Board marketing committee Foehl is the school representative. This group is working to bring in people who don’t know SCDS is a school, Foehl said. They are also making sure people know that SCDS is the best academic high school in the region.
They’ve started a campaign, utilizing Capital Public Radio and other publications and outlets to raise awareness for the school.
The group has also created new ads focusing on the high school, which have run in Inside Publications and Sactown Magazine, among others.
One article in Inside Publications featured an SCDS student and another featured headmaster Stephen Repsher.
The Board marketing committee is also trying to increase the enrollment of students in pre-kindergarten, kindergarten and first grade.
Foehl visits classes partially because he’s new but mainly because he just wants to know what is going on at school, he said. Foehl said he is inspired by what happens in classrooms.
He also said he loves being in a pre-kindergarten-12th school and that it’s “neat” to be in classes with younger kids.
“Part of my job is being a vocal enthusiast for what we’re doing at Country Day,” Foehl said.
Foehl is also working with Joy Pangilinan, director of special programs, to expand the school’s summer program by offering more middle- and high-school classes.
They are planning to offer a summer Language Institute, including classes in French, Spanish and Latin.
Fundraising for Breakthrough is another one of Foehl’s duties.
He works with Adolfo Mercado, director of Breakthrough Sacramento, and Repsher to make donor participation in the organization more consistent. They want founders and corporations to “have a long term commitment to supporting Breakthrough,” Foehl said.
Foehl also leads the curriculum committee, which he said was not active before he came to the school.
“(The committee) didn’t have much cross-divisional representation” Foehl said, noting that it had more representatives from the middle and high school and fewer from the lower school. Now it has four lower-school faculty members.
“I think of us as three schools, but one Country Day,” Foehl said.
Right now the committee’s focus is on technology and innovation. Each year they will focus on a different topic, Foehl said.
In addition, Foehl assists with hiring. He and Repsher meet regularly with the division heads.
He also has his own advisory and said he is interested in teaching an elective in the near future because of his academic background, which includes being in a Ph.D. program in American Studies at Yale.
Foehl has extensive experience teaching electives at both the college and high-school levels.
He wants to teach electives related to his background in American Studies, which include Race and Ethnicity in the American West, California literature, food and American culture.
