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Generosity Abounds
A Model FIS Family
As most of you are by now aware, our school has been honoured with a generous gift of more than €25 million from the Stroth fami- ly estate. Our Board of Trustees has spent considerable time discussing how this monumental donation should be both well used and well guarded, so that it can benefit FIS stu- dents for many generations to come. To this end, Paul Fochtman and I re- cently wrote to you to announce that we will set up a Foundation, seeded by this bequest. Throughout, I have also been thinking a good deal about the Stroth family apart from this gift, and wondering what factors must have been at play to lead them to create this lasting legacy.
Like my own family, and many others in our community, the Stroths were a multicultural couple. Dr. Rolf-Rüdiger Stroth, a German, had good reason to be proud of his heritage, as did his wife, Dr. Hazel Stroth, an adventurous American expatriate. I would imagine, as they moved their family to the diverse area of Frankfurt, they sought an educational setting that would celebrate all cultures. I would wager that they placed their energy, passion and resources into the creation and growth of our school, because on many levels they understood that multicultural understanding was paramount.
FIS was, is and will continue to be a remarkable place
Although this is my first year as your FIS Board of Trustees Chair, it is my eighth year serving on the Board, the same Board on which Dr. Stroth also served all those years ago. And while we have the requisite debates and deliberations found in all good leadership bodies, I feel that the high
Dr. Hazel Stroth
aspirations of the Stroths and others that started the school back in 1961 remain as strong as ever. Our Board is a multicultural group of eleven parents and one faculty member, who continually return to the school’s Mission Statement to ensure our decisions are well founded. Both implicitly and explicitly we may ask...
• Will this action help our school further inspire student development?
• Is this decision aligned with our commitment to be family-oriented?
• How can we model social responsibility in these trying times?
While a Board sometimes must make difficult decisions, I believe what makes our FIS Board of Trustees unusually effective is that we also ask difficult questions. Over the years we have worked hard to establish open and honest lines of communication with the FIS Administration, so that our questions are not seen as combative, but as an invitation to dialogues about what is best for our community, and how our school can continually improve.
As an FIS parent I am in awe of the generosity of the Stroth family. Their
Dr. Rolf-Rüdiger Stroth
name will be remembered for the life of our school. And I believe that if we had spoken to them during FIS’ early years, they would have said that they too were in awe of its students and the learning that transpires here. Since our modest beginnings, our school has had masterful teachers from around the world who inspire an ever more international student body to realize their potential of “head, heart and hand.” FIS was, is and will continue to be a remarkable place.
Jonathan Clenshaw, Chair Board of Trustees
4 FIS World October 2015