Pottbecker plans to leave Marvelwood School

KENT — Scott E. Pottbecker, who is head of school at Marvelwood School, has announced that he will resign his post at the end of this school year.

Pottbecker is the school’s fifth headmaster and has been at Marvelwood since July 1, 2005. Before that, he was chief financial officer and assistant head of school at the Forman School in Litchfield.

A graduate of the University of Connecticut, he has a master’s degree in Public Administration from the University of Hartford.

Pottbecker, 44, didn’t give any specific reasons for his departure but did say that his background is in finance and that he is seeking new opportunities. He said he has to give the school’s board one year’s advance notice before leaving.

Marvelwood was founded in 1956 in Cornwall and moved to Kent in 1995. It is on the site of what used to be the girls dormitories for the Kent School.

The school’s new athletic center was built during Pottbecker’s tenure; he helped complete fundraising for it and also acted as general contractor during construction.

Pottbecker also helped establish the Nancy and Andrew Wood Charitable Foundation in 2007 with an initial sum of $1 million. The foundation gives financial assistance to students in the form of the Robert and Cornelia Bodkin Memorial Scholarships (named for Nancy Wood’s late brother, who was the school’s first headmaster).

Marvelwood in recent years has prided itself on its high retention rate. The student body is diverse and comes from many different parts of the world. The approach to academics is flexible and designed to make learning accessible and enjoyable to students of varying abilities.

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