The Vital Involvement of ASHA with One of the Oldest American Educational Institutions outside the U.S.

The American College of Sofia is one of the oldest American educational institutions outside the United States. It traces its roots directly to a school opened in Philippopolis, Bulgaria, by American missionaries for the 1860-61 school year. In 1871, the school was moved to Samokov where it flourished for the next half century. Hundreds of Bulgarian students attended, many going on to become ministers or social workers, others to become government officials and teachers.

In 1926, Sofia American Schools, Inc. was created for the sole purpose of providing education for Bulgaria youth and agreed to build a new campus at a site already selected in the capital of Bulgaria, Sofia. By the end of the decade the facilities were sufficient to house 500 boarding students and many of the staff. Students provided some of the labor, making furniture for the College in a workshop, digging a swimming pool, and planting hundreds of trees. The Carnegie Endowment for World Peace provided funds to create the best English language library in the Balkans.

After World War II in 1947 the campus, school equipment, and the library were confiscated by the communist  government. School equipment was turned over to the Ministry of Education; library books were dispersed or destroyed (some remain even now in the National Library and others have been returned to the College by the Rila Monastery). The campus became the headquarters of the Bulgarian state police which occupied some of the buildings and constructed others.

The fall of the Communist regime in Bulgaria in November 1989, opened the possibility that the American College of Sofia would resume operations. In the spring of 1992, after persistent requests by alumni of the College, the American Ambassadors to Bulgaria, and leaders of the first reform Bulgarian government, Sofia American Schools, Inc., sent Dr. Roger Whitaker to Sofia to reopen the College. He arrived with no teachers, no buildings, no books or classroom supplies, and no students. He found the once-prestigious school neglected and ransacked.

Roger Whitaker, first president of the reinstituted ACS: "We needed desks and chairs for the classrooms and all kinds of household furnishing for the faculty houses at the campus that were empty when we arrived. … We ordered huge quantities of parquet since the Police Academy had taken out all the flooring as they vacated the buildings and we knew that inflation would grossly increase the cost of the flooring if we delayed."

ASHA has provided ACS more than four million dollars over twenty years. These investments help us to educate the next generation of Bulgaria’s leaders instilled with American values of integrity, self-reliance, and democratic practices, combined with a high level of personal achievement. The American College of Sofia was transformed to the top high-school in the country with students and alumni succeeding on a global scale and changing Bulgaria.

In the early years, it was a matter of physical survival. ASHA stepped in and helped the American College of Sofia renovate one of our school buildings  and construct a dormitory, thus giving students outside Sofia a chance to have safe and affordable housing away from home. 

Since those beginnings ACS has been making steady progress. The integration of Bulgaria into the EU and NATO has made the region more "connected" and also more competitive. The school's mission and teaching philosophy promotes American values and best practices in the face of nationalism, political and business corruption, and conflicting geopolitical interests.

Over the years, ASHA's support and assistance have developed in response to new challenges. Later grants to the College have provided chemistry and physics lab equipment. In these labs, new generations of young scientists are nurtured: they inaugurated an international student science forum, FISSION, now in its fourth year, and they perform at the top at every competition, Olympiad, STEM forum, and innovation fair they participate in, nationally and regionally.

The Chair of the Humanities and Fine Arts Department Zornitsa Semkova summarizes: "Our teaching philosophy concentrates on critical thinking, analysis, questioning, comparing of facts, independent research, teamwork. The aim being that upon graduation students have acquired a basic set of skills and habits for research and critical approach to reality supported by enough socio-political knowledge about this environment."

This approach results in a modern worldview that extends beyond the curriculum: most notably in empathy and inclusivity - exemplified by the Young Women’s Empowerment Club, the student clubs We Care and Interact, the BioEthics, American Sign Language, and Keep Our Planet Alive clubs - that provide societal antidotes to xenophobia, isolationism, and regional state corruption.