Alex Appleby, right, hugs Principal Sarah Strassburger after being presented with the Principal s Award during the Aspen High School senior awards and local scholarship ceremony on Monday, May 24, 2021, on the AHS turf field. Photo by Austin Colbert/The Aspen Times.
It may well be the marquee event of awards season at Aspen High School: Monday night’s senior awards and local scholarship ceremony recognized the accomplishments of the class of 2021 with dozens of honors and funds for college.
All told, 81 seniors walked away with more than $350,000 in college scholarships from nearly 40 local donor groups, according to Susanne Morrison, the administrative coordinator at Aspen High School’s post-secondary counseling department. Students also scored hundreds of thousands of dollars from regional and national awards, some of which include full ride scholarships for all four years of college (see sidebar).
IF YOU GO …
Where: Aspen District Theatre
How much: $10/students; $15/adults
Tickets: aspenk12.net IF YOU WATCH…
Where: aspenk12.net
When: May 20-22, 6 p.m. nightly
After a 2020 cancellation, an often-disrupted school year and 14 months of pandemic life, Aspen High School’s annual musical is back, live and in-person. With distanced seating for 200, the curtain goes up Friday in the Aspen District Theatre for four live performances followed by three nights of streamed online shows.
Students began distanced and masked rehearsals in January, when the coronavirus infection rate was spiking locally and the return of live theater seemed a long way away. Five months later, with vaccines out, infections down and most public health restrictions dropped, Aspen High School will open its production of “Songs for a New World,” crossing a finish line few could envision this spring.
Aspen High School seniors Alex and Jeremy Martin ring a bell in Gondola Plaza in Aspen to celebrate their post-grad decisions on Sunday, May 2, 2021. The brothers will both be heading to the Claremont Colleges in California this fall Alex to Harvey Mudd College and Jeremy to Pomona College.
Kaya Williams/The Aspen Times
A bit of rain didn’t put a damper on Sunday’s festivities at Gondola Plaza, when four waves of seniors from the Aspen High School class of 2021 rang a gold bell to celebrate their post-graduation decisions. It was an especially momentous occasion after a school year that students at the event described as “strange,” “hectic,” “interesting,” “a whirlwind.”
Participants join a Braver Angels moderated debate on climate change hosted by Aspen High School on Wednesday, April 28, 2021.
Zane Zachary has witnessed firsthand the impacts of what he sees as a polarized environment at Aspen High School.
“We all think similarly, we all have the same goals, we all want the same things,” the high school senior said in a phone conversation earlier this month.
Yet conversations on those topics often veered into divided, heated territory among students and adults alike, according to Zachary.
“There really isn’t an environment at the school where I think kids can deal with these kinds of issues appropriately, and it’s the same with the administration,” he said.
Matt Kuhn has been named the city of Aspen’s director of parks and open space.
Kuhn has been serving as the interim director since June.
Kuhn previously served as the business services director, operations manager and trails manager for the city’s parks and open space department and began his career doing summer seasonal trail maintenance in 2005.
“I feel honored to have this opportunity to serve the public by helping guide the preservation, stewardship and management of our valuable city owned public lands,” Kuhn said in a news release. “I understand how much our properties and facilities nurture our community and provide spaces to recreate, contemplate and share time with friends and family. I look forward to continue to guide the management of these community resources.”