University Liggett School celebrates 50 years of academic excellence

We will celebrate an important milestone this year — our Golden Anniversary. The 2020-21 academic session marks 50 years since students first graduated under the united University Liggett School (ULS) identity in the spring of 1971.

ULS has operated as “University Liggett School” since the merger of Grosse Pointe University School and The Liggett School in 1969. ULS celebrated its first official graduating class in the spring of 1971. Students in the Class of 1970 were given the opportunity to graduate as either a GPUS student or a Liggett School student. All students officially graduated under a united ULS identity beginning with the 1970-71 school year.

We plan to mark this historic milestone with a commemorative gold shield logo and social media campaigns highlighting events and notable faculty and staff from its 50-year history.

“It is an honor to steward an institution that has for 50 years dedicated itself to preparing young people to meet and solve the challenges of the modern world,” said Head of School Bart Bronk. “As we continue to encounter obstacles unimaginable until last spring, we are bolstered by the knowledge that we can overcome the most significant of challenges and continue providing an educational experience rich with meaning while doing it. Adaptability and resilience are traits that we owe to our predecessor schools that paved the way.”

The school’s legacy as an esteemed educational institution goes back much further than 50 years. The first of the predecessor schools, Detroit Home and Day School, was founded in 1878 by the Rev. James Liggett and changed its name to The Liggett School in 1912. Detroit University School (DUS), the second predecessor school, was founded in 1899 by Frederick Leroy Bliss and Henry Gray Sherrard. Legend has it that an epidemic of typhoid prompted the founding of the third predecessor school, Grosse Pointe Country Day School (CDS), in 1915. As a wartime measure to pool financial oversight, in 1941 CDS and DUS merged boards. The two schools comprehensively merged in 1955 to form Grosse Pointe University School (GPUS). Finally, GPUS and The Liggett School joined in 1969 to become University Liggett School.