page_title: Shady Side Academy
section_title: Academics
hierarchical_section_title: Shady Side Academy / Academics
caption_attribution_description: English: Rowe Hall is Shady Side Academy's main academic and administrative building. Façade depicted
context_page_description: Shady Side Academy is an independent preparatory school located in the Borough of Fox Chapel, and in the Point Breeze neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1883 as an all-male day school in the Shadyside neighborhood of Pittsburgh, the Academy now offers a secular coeducational PK–12 program on four campuses in the city and its suburbs, including weekday boarding in the Croft and Morewood Houses of its Senior School Campus.
  Formed to provide for the education of the sons of newly-moneyed industrialists of Pittsburgh's East End, the Academy counts the Frick and Mellon families among its early patrons. In 1922 the Academy expanded to its sprawling Georgian Senior School campus in the then-countryside of Fox Chapel under the influence of the Country Day School movement. The Academy merged with the Arnold School in 1940 to form its Junior School campus and added its stone Tudor manor-style Middle School campus in 1958, emerging in its current three-school system. The Academy admitted its first female students in 1973. The school has in recent years demonstrated a vigorous commitment to diversity and financial accessibility.
context_section_description: Academic life at Shady Side Academy operates on a trimester system, dividing the year into three thirteen to fourteen-week terms. Classes begin each year before Labor Day with Convocation in late August and finish with Commencement exercises in early June. Second Term begins in late November, and Third Term begins in early April. At the Senior School, regular classes begin each day at 8:15 a.m. and end at 3:00 p.m., punctuated by a late-morning assembly period. All-school assemblies take place every Monday and Friday in the Hillman Center's Rauh Theater, and every Wednesday students meet with their advisory groups. The academic day is divided into six periods filled with at least five classes, a lunch period, and intermittent free periods. Athletic practices follow the school day from 3:45 p.m. to late afternoon. Class periods are determined by an eight-day rotating schedule.
  Each term students enroll in a minimum of five classes, both year-long courses and one-term electives, taught by seven academic departments—Arts, Computer Science, English, History, Mathematics, Science, and World Languages. Many departments, particularly the English and History Departments, make extensive use of the Harkness table, as the majority of rooms in Rowe have large, oval tables. This is a teaching style similar to the Socratic method. Students receive midterm grade reports during the year's first term and subsequently at the conclusion of each term, followed by a cumulative grade report at the end of the year. The grade for each class has three parts—a letter grade, an effort grade, and a paragraph of written remarks. The quality grade, assigned on the A+ (4.3333) to F (0.0) scale, is used to calculate the student's GPA. Effort grades for each class consist of a number from 5, indicating "exemplary effort", to 1, indicating "unacceptable effort". Effort grades of 2—"inconsistent effort"— or below result in a student's placement on Academic Warning and likely an interim report to the student's parents. The Academy uses the student's GPA and effort grades each term and at the end of the year to award academic Year and Term Honors, ranging from "Honors" (B+ average) to "Highest Honors" (A average), as well as other school and departmental prizes. Established in 1929, Shady Side Academy's chapter of the Cum Laude Society elects members from the top fifth of the graduating class based on academic performance in the junior year and in the first two terms of the senior year.
caption: Rowe Hall, the LEED-certified main academic and administrative building of the Senior School campus
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