Bryn Mawr 100: The Shipley School

is a pretty busy place.

This summer alone, the Yarrow Street linchpin hosted an international youth sports tournament—August's —installed a language curriculum to build literacy skills in preschoolers, and finished construction on new athletic fields.

But as Shipley head of school Steve Piltch points out, despite the many balls the institution keeps in the air, it keeps its eyes especially glued to one: providing the best education possible for its 825 students, preschool through grade 12.

"Shipley is a school all about our kids and about encouraging them to be the best students and people possible," said Piltch, the institution's eighth head of school in its 117 year history. "Our teachers inspire our students to take intellectual and creative risks and to achieve success at the highest level in all areas."

The school was originally conceived of to encourage success in one fairly narrow area: . Founded in 1894 by three sisters—Hannah, Elizabeth, and Katharine Shipley—as a preparatory school for the college, Shipley's initial class had six students. By 1950 though, that number grew to 340 and the scope of the institution's ambition grew with it. At that point, half of its upper school students were from outside the Main Line—many of them international—and they were being groomed to attend universities all over the country.

The trend hasn't reversed.

Sarah Thomas, a 1997 graduate, has put her Shipley education to work. Thomas, a screenwriter and actress, spent parts of July and August ," an independent film she wrote, produced, and costarred in.

Communications director Sue Mannix said that while at Shipley, Thomas was an excellent student—she went on to graduate from Williams College; a top shelf athlete—she was the first 1,000 point scorer on the girls’ basketball team; as well as a distinguished performer and leader. Mannix cited her successes as an example of the Shipley ethos at work: Help every student develop their individual strengths and talents, then help them channel those talents toward excellence in the classroom and beyond.

There are many students like Thomas as Shipley though, and Mannix, like Piltch, credits the institution's teachers for shaping them. Or, more aptly, giving them the proper tools to shape themselves.

"At Shipley," Mannix wrote Patch in an email, "our teachers are passionate and skilled and inspire great outcomes."

Editor's Note: This is the fifteenth in a . Check back with Bryn Mawr-Gladwyne Patch for more profiles leading up to the Sept. 10 celebration.