Archdiocese of St. Louis

The new Alive in Christ scholarships are making a big difference to many families across the St. Louis Archdiocese, families like the Loneros of Blessed Teresa of Calcutta Parish in Ferguson.

"Catholic education means everything to us," said Lisa Lonero. She and her husband, John, have two children. One is an incoming freshman at Trinity Catholic High School in north St. Louis County. The other, a fourth-grader at their parish school, is being assisted by an Alive in Christ scholarship.

With two children in Catholic schools, "the scholarship definitely helps a lot," Lonero said.

George Henry, superintendent of Catholic Schools for the archdiocese, presented a progress report of the Alive In Christ Mission Advancement Initiative at the Aug. 8 Leadership Conference for educators and pastors. The following are specific tasks relating to the four goals for the initiative.

Some of the work already has been completed, with more to come in the 2012-13 school year and over the next six years. The work will culminate with a bicentennial celebration of Catholic education in the archdiocese in 2018.

Catechesis and Academic Excellence

It's Big History. And for several Catholic high schools, it's big news.

This fall, three Catholic high schools in the Archdiocese of St. Louis are participating in a pilot of the Big History Project, an international course for high school students that looks at the past from the Big Bang theory to modern times, covering a period of 13.7 billion years.

St. Louis University, which has offered a master's degree in Catholic school leadership since the early 1980s, began a similar program for doctoral students in 2010. It is one of only three Catholic universities in the country with such a program.

The first class of the St. Louis University Catholic doctorate program has finished its coursework and its student members are completing their doctoral projects, which are team efforts among the students. The Catholic Cohort includes about 20 teachers, administrators, campus ministers and others connected with Catholic education.

Several thousand students will be attending Catholic schools this year in the St. Louis Archdiocese with the help of multiple sources of financial aid.

Catholic Education Center

The Catholic Family Tuition Assistance Endowment Fund helped more than 2,000 students from more than 1,475 families, according to David Shelton, director of administrative services for the Catholic Education Center. Those students received approximately $640,000 in grants for their education. More than 2,000 families applied for the grants, he added.

Catholic schools across the country are facing many challenges driven by lower enrollments and escalating costs. The Archdiocese of St. Louis is addressing these challenges by combining traditional educational solutions with innovative methods to continue providing accessible, affordable, quality Catholic education to as many students as possible.