Home / News & Publications / Michigan Catholic News / 2008 / Dominican sisters envision all-girls high school in Novi
Dominican sisters envision all-girls high school in Novi
by Joe Kohn of The Michigan Catholic
Published January 25, 2008
Detroit — In 2009, Novi might be the next city to have a brand new Catholic high school.
The same group of planners, architects and managers who spearheaded the effort to move Detroit Catholic Central High School from Redford Township into Novi are honing a vision they've had for years of starting an all-girls Catholic high school. If their plans play out, St. Catherine of Siena High School will open in the spring of 2009 and be staffed by the Lansing-based Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist.
"All of the primary pieces of the puzzle we kept in place from the Catholic Central High School project," said Mike Dewan, chairman of board of directors of the St. Catherine of Siena Academy Foundation. "I assisted Fr. (Richard) Elmer (CSB, president of Catholic Central) on the CC project, and he in turn has been advising us and helping us to move this along through the archdiocese and with the city of Novi."
Site-wise, a plot of 52 acres has been offered for the school, across the street from Catholic Central. The site plans are still awaiting approval from the Novi city council, Dewan says. All plans for the school remain tentative until the zoning issues are worked out with the city. Also, he says, a separate project of building a Catholic resource center for Catholic educators and families is in the works.
The need for the school became apparent, Dewan says, when studies were done for the feasibility of moving Detroit Catholic Central to Novi. They became more apparent as the student population at CC rose – it's now at more than 1,000 students.
"Each year the interested parties in the school and those who wanted to attend the school is growing, and it's growing dramatically," says Dewan, himself a CC graduate. Many who have sons at Catholic Central, he says, have daughters that would attend an all-girls school in proximity to CC.
The board of St. Catherine of Siena Academy Foundation had been in prayerful dialogue with the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist, for a few years. The decade-old order had blossomed in Lansing, from four sisters in 1997 to a current total of 80 sisters, some assigned to ministries elsewhere in the country.
"Once we met the sisters and saw the good work they're already doing in the Diocese of Lansing, we asked them to pray about it," said Dewan. "It wasn't an overnight decision." Last year, however, the sisters agreed to commit sisters to staff the school.
St. Catherine of Siena Academy
What: An all-girls Catholic high school.
When: It's tentatively scheduled to open in Spring 2009.
Where: In Novi, on 52 acres across the street from Detroit Catholic Central High School.
Who's involved: The school is being started by the planners, architects and managers who built the Detroit Catholic Central High School building in Novi. It will be staffed by the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist, from Lansing.
How it's funded: Fundraising has not yet begun. The school will be financed long-term and an endowment will be created.
School mission: "The mission of St. Catherine of Siena Academy is to educate the hearts and minds of young women who will set the world on fire with love for Christ. The young women who are educated at St. Catherine of Siena Academy will be formed in truth, beauty, and goodness through the cultivation of both faith and reason...."
Web site:
SaintCatherineAcademy.com | Sr. Thomas Augustine Becker, OP, has been named the principal. Sr. Becker says the school will focus on the proper formation of women to renew the Catholic culture.
"At the heart of it is going to be the vocation of womanhood," she says, "which has some aspect of motherhood – whether it be physical or spiritual."
The school's mission statement says St. Catherine Academy will have "an emphasis on the realization of what John Paul II called the feminine genius and the vocation of woman." It states graduates "will be witnesses of authentic Christian womanhood in the midst of a thirsting world."
Ideally, planners say, the school will open in Fall 2009 and welcome a sophomore class of up to 40 young women, and a freshmen class of up to 150. At full capacity, the school would be able to accommodate 650 students.
Dewan says the school will be funded through long-term debt financing. As the school's community pays off the debt, it also will build an endowment for the future, he says. With Catholic Central being a likely neighbor to the new school, Fr. Elmer says the CC community is excited about the prospect.
"From my perspective, it's a wonderful addition to a Catholic campus that is going to be in that area," Fr. Elmer says. "It somehow completes the picture that we have this wonderful school, and then to have another one within a couple of blocks of where we are."
Both Fr. Elmer and Sr. Becker say that the relationship between the two schools would be shaped over time, and separately according to the charism of each religious community. But they both also see cooperation in the future.
"I'm sure both schools would have support of the other," Fr. Elmer says.
Other all-girls high schools in the archdiocese are the Academy of the Sacred Heart, Bloomfield Hills; Ladywood High School, Livonia; Marian, Bloomfield Hills; Mercy, Farmington Hills; and Regina High School, Warren.
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