FROM THE PRESIDENT
Dear Parents, Alumni, and Friends of Jesuit,
The current issue of
Perspectives highlights the
academic life of the school.
By almost any measure, Jesuit
has experienced tremendous
academic growth and enjoyed
great scholastic success in recent
years. That unfolding story is the
focus of this issue.
It has long been my conviction
that a prospective student
basing his high school decision
solely on academics should rank
Jesuit as his number one choice
in the Tampa Bay area. Naturally,
as he goes through the admissions
process,��he will ��nd much
else favorable and excellent
about Jesuit to attract his attention.
In this Perspectives, you
will learn about the impressive
array of curricular improvements
put in place by our faculty
and the many laudable honors
and academic achievements
hard won by our students.
Because we are now in the
middle of admission season,
this issue presents me with an
ideal forum and opportunity
to summarize the classic Jesuit
approach to education, an
approach that situates academics
in the context of our overall
goals at the school. The distinguished
Jesuit historian, Fr. John
O’Malley, S.J., once summarized
2 JESUIT PERSPECTIVES • FALL 2019
the aims of our early school in
his book, The First Jesuits. The
summary I offer here is adapted
from his list:
First, Jesuit education aims
to remain affordable through
a vigorous need-based ��nancial
aid program, and a limited
number of merit-based awards.
Second, Jesuit schools welcome
students from widely divergent
backgrounds. In our case, most
notably, we receive students
from all across the Tampa Bay
area – from Catholic schools,
public schools, non-Catholic
private schools, as well as students
who are home-schooled
or moving in from other areas.
Our student body is drawn from
4 counties, 77 zip codes, and 114
feeder schools.
Third, our outstanding and
growing curriculum is rooted
in the arts and sciences. It
is not conceived narrowly as
a “technical” or “professional”
education. Character formation,
which includes our program of
discipline, lies at the heart of
our academics.
Fourth, our academic curriculum,
encompassing the arts and
sciences, is meant also to serve
broadly our religious aims,
introducing students, at least
indirectly, to the one and triune
God who created all things.
Fifth, in the face of many educational
fads that come and go,
we have maintained a strong,
structured curriculum in which
the students progress from level
to level according to coherent
standards and in conformity
with the clear goals of each
department’s well-conceived
curriculum.
Sixth, Jesuit education insists
on active, and not merely passive,
learning. The students routinely
demonstrate their active
appropriation of the material
Rev. Richard C. Hermes, S.J.