Open Day 2019
On 23 March 2019, Institut Montana held its fourth annual Open Day to prospective families and guests. The day was blessed with an unusually warm and sunny day for the month March, which meant a variety of additional activities were put on the table.
To begin, our Entrepreneurship Programme welcomed guests at the entrance of our campus with hammocks from Mexico. If there is one key feature that all budding businessmen should know, it’s tenacity. After all, tenacity is what sales people are best known for. Our students were able to improve their networking game, the art of persuasion and understand what their market wants. It was a good learning lesson for our students to see their business idea come to fruition and have real-world practice in the business world.
We also offered various campus tours that were carried out by our own students who were able to showcase “A Day in the Life of an Institut Montana Student.” This meant families were able to see where our students sleep, where they meetup with friends to socialize, where they can really bunker down to focus on their studying, the various classrooms and in general, the special place on Mt. Zugerberg that many call a home away from home.
In one of our science labs, students and teacher, Robert Macbeth, introduced many to a Van de Graaff generator, an electrostatic generator which uses a moving belt to accumulate electric charge on a hollow metal global on the top of an insulated column, creating very high electric potentials. Or, to put it simply – it makes your hair stick up when you touch the globe because of a high concentration of electrical compounds. There were also prepared specimen slides of various organs and insects and wonders of chemical reactions that let out loud bangs throughout campus.
Museum Burg Zug was also on campus to offer a special guided tour of our historical Felsenegg building. Did you know, in the summer of 1945, the Felsenegg building served as a recreational home for 107 young boys from the liberated Buchenwald Concentration Camp. Many people followed freelance historian, Micheal van Oursow, as he explained the various historical moments that our buildings and surroundings played during both World Wars.
As mentioned before, thanks to the amazing weather we had, Golf Vital set up a small golf course to help those interested improve their golf swing. The most exciting part was this was led by Ken Benz, one of Switzerland’s very own professional golfer who started his professional career at the ripe at of 21 and has also participated in numerous European Tour tournaments. After all, if a professional golf player can’t help improve your swing, who can?
The day ended with the fifth installment of our “Montana Classics” concert run by our very own piano teacher and répétiteur, Marianne Walker, and featured one of our 7th graders, Gaëtan Picaud, on the flute. We thank everyone who helped make this day special and hope to see you for next year’s Open Day!