Track Athlete Cal Lane - Update

In the last edition of the Knightly Knews, we ran a story about former Woodward Academy student, Cal Lane, and his pursuit of a professional track career. At that time, we reported that Cal was training on his own and through the help of Woodward Academy's Lifetime Commitment program, was able to travel to Iowa State University to compete in their indoor winter event, that he won. You can read that story by clicking here to download the latest Knightly Knews.

Since that time, Cal has traveled to Arkansas University and won that long jump event as well. A video of him jumping is posted below. He jumped 25' 0" (7.62 meters) and accomplished his first goal of qualifying for the USATF Indoor National Championship, which is being held in Albuquerque, New Mexico, February 21-23. Later this month he will be competing at the University of Kansas to continue to prepare for the Nationals meet. We'll keep you updated as more information is available.

2013 NAHC Mentor of the Year - Cody Irvin

Staff at Woodward Academy have to be very active and energetic on a daily basis. Between teaching, coaching opportunities, extracurricular activities, and just spending time on the dorm, our staff invest an amazing amount of time into our student population and it is one of the primary reasons why we see such dramatic success in our students. While this blog focuses mostly on student accomplishments and activities on campus, our staff members do have lives and interests outside of Woodward Academy. Those things equally make up who they are and what they can bring to campus.

Recent, Cody Irvin was selected as the North American Hunter's Mentor of the Year. As a life long hunter and member of the organization, this is a really great honor and a reflection of Cody's personality. On campus, Cody is the Knights on the Move Director, which means that he is the man in charge of our largest vocational opportunity for students. But the real reflection of the award that he won is that he is the "mentor" of the year. Having seen Cody work directly with students at Knights on the Move, he is an amazing teacher to students. He is patient, thorough, polite, and everything that a great mentor would be. He is a great diplomat for Woodward Academy and puts our students in positions to be successful. Congrats Cody!

RUSH Month - Becoming a Knight

The Knights Club is the elite student body on campus and it is the organization that is at the center of our success. Becoming a member of the Knights Club is a big deal for our students and is often a very memorable moment. For them, the moment is a culmination of months of them dedicating themselves to changing for the positive.

The process of becoming a Knight takes time. First, they learn the norms on their dorm and on campus and demonstrate that by supporting them and confronting negative behavior. Over time, Knights on their dorm recognize and support them by giving them their pledge. Once this occurs, students are actively working toward their Knight status by collaborating directly with the Knights on their dorm. Once complete, they earn their Knight status in from of the entire Club. This moment occurred for a lot of students last week at the end of RUSH Month.

The goal of Rush Month is to accelerate this process by giving those students who do not have their Knight a chance to earn it by getting their pledge. Some of those students may be new to campus, other students it may another opportunity to get it. Whatever the case may be, this year's Rush Month was a huge success and ended with 217 Knights walking around campus, many of which were new to the club. Congrats to those Knights who worked directly with pledges, and an even bigger congratulations to those who earned their Knight for the first time.

Knightly Knews Volume 28 is now online!

The latest edition of the Knightly Knews is now online and you can access it by clicking here.  As a .pdf document, you can view or download the quarterly publication to your computer, iPad, or smartphone for easy reading. Some highlights in this edition include:

- Weekend Activities
- Fall Sports recap (football and cross country)
- An Alumni Profile: Cal Lane
- Students seeing Macklemore in Concert
- I Am Building Woodward Academy: Staff  Profile
- GED Program
- How to Stay Connected with WA

We hope you have a chance to check it out and enjoy the read.

Stay Connected with the Knights

There are a lot of ways to stay connected with Woodward Academy. This blog is one of the most popular ways to get recent information about the happenings on campus. Updated several times a month, this is often the first place where you can get the latest in WA news. But there are other avenues to learn about what Woodward Academy offers its students as well. Our quarterly newsletter, The Knightly Knews, has a circulation of approximately 800 of which we either mail directly or can be picked up on campus. You can also download a pdf version of past issues by clicking here.

If you're new to Woodward Academy, our website is a great place to start to get an overview of campus life. You can get there by clicking here. From the site, you can watch our latest promotional video (which is embedded below) and download our mobile web application. Both of these are great overviews of WA and show things like dorm life, education, athletics, and vocations. The mobile web application in particular is a great tool because it is something you can download onto your iPhone, iPad, or Android device and take with you wherever you go. It also has the video embedded in the application so it can be viewed anywhere. So get connected and stay in touch with the Knights.

Basketball Poster 2013 - 2014

The 2013-2014 Iowa high school basketball season is fully underway at this point and we thought it would be a good idea to show off the team in the official Woodward Academy basketball poster. The Knights are led by first time head coach Dustin Sperling this season and have a lot of really talented players. The poster has a simple composite layout that has been digitally signed by all of the players. If you're on campus, grab a poster for your office and follow the Knights all season. You can check out a play by play of some of the games on Press Box Radio by clicking here.

GED Graduates

The month of May marks the end of the academic school year and is the time when we honor the senior class with a commencement ceremony. But May is not the only time when academic accomplishments are made. Many students attend Woodward Academy behind on credits needed for high school graduation. Some students are able to make up those up during the summer when most students are enjoying some time off. But for those students who are drastically behind in credits, working towards their GED is the best option.

Students study for the GED and take practice tests on campus with our testing coordinator. When they are ready, they can then try for the real thing at a DMACC, a local community college. After successfully completing the five tests that are a part of the GED, students earn their general equivalency diploma. This doesn't just happen in the spring, but throughout the year. In fact, over the last couple months, more than a dozen WA students have earned their GED.