FOUNDERS’ DAY HALL OF FAME CEREMONY
Friday, September 20, 2019, 10:00 a.m. Welcome Breakfast & 11:00 a.m. Ceremony
Louisa Performing Arts Center
Audience: 5th - 12th Grade, Alumni, Parents, and Special Guests
Honoring the school’s founders with awards presented to alumni and past faculty/staff. This year’s honoree shines a spotlight on the school’s dedication to the veteran teacher, Mr. Sam Johnson, who retired in 2016.
A champion of experiential education at CSS from 1991-2016, Sam was not just your ordinary science teacher. With his love for Biology and Chemistry, he deeply connected students to rigorous content, experiments, and seminars connected to the natural world. He directed the Experience Centered Seminar (ECS) program for years and is credited with bringing fire to campus in the way of the first Great Iron Pour ECS in conjunction with Mr. Hans Wolfe. During the 90s, Sam served as Head of Upper School. For decades, Sam’s students excelled on the Advanced Placement Biology and Chemistry exams, known as two of the toughest APs across the nation.
Noted by many as a renaissance man, Sam developed interests well beyond science. He is an author, a composer, and an artist, not to mention his dry-wit and ability to offer comedic relief. During his years on campus, he was affectionately referred to as the “moth man,” and his popularized Moth song as been sung many times over in the Upper School on Mountain Caravan and even shared on YouTube. The song persists as a tradition of Mountain Caravan even after his retirement in 2016. More seriously, Sam gifted the school its alma mater during the 50th-anniversary celebration in 2012. He exudes a passion for life-long learning. After 25 years of service to CSS, Sam’s retired lifestyle offers ample time for moth and butterfly identifications in the scientific community, as well as time to lead bio blitzes across the front range.
Read about past Hall of Fame inductees.
