Holy Ghost Prep receives record $2.1M gift
The donation is the latest seven-figure gift given by the Howley Foundation
BY RYAN MULLIGAN rmulligan@bizjournals.com
Holy Ghost Preparatory School has received a $2.1 million commitment from the Howley Foundation, the latest in a string of seven-figure gifts the organization has given to Philadelphia-area Catholic schools.
The donation will provide scholarships to four students annually in each of the four high school grades at the Bensalem all-boys school over a 10-year period. The gift is the largest in the history of Holy Ghost Prep.
Founded by Nick and Lorie Howley more than 20 years ago and helmed by their daughter Meg, the Howley Foundation focuses its giving in Cleveland and Philadelphia, supporting some 1,200 high school students in and around those cities last year.
The Howley Foundation gave tens of millions of dollars to Philadelphia-area institutions in 2024 alone.
Nick Howley, the founder and chairman of Cleveland-based aircraft parts supplier TransDigm Group Inc., has a net worth of $1.1 billion, according to Forbes.
The Holy Ghost Prep scholarship program funded by the Howley gift will begin with this fall’s freshman class. Students will be selected based on “academic achievement and potential to serve as leaders while attending Holy Ghost Prep,” the school said in a release.
$27,250
Annual tuition at Holy Ghost Preparatory School, according to Business Journal research. The school was founded in 1897 as Holy Ghost Apostolic College.
Last year, the Howley Foundation gave record gifts of $9.1 million and $12 million to Merion Mercy Academy and Saint Joseph’s Preparatory School, respectively.
The foundation also gave $15 million to Nick Howley’s alma mater, Drexel University, last March. It started 2025 with a $5.2 million gift to Waldron Mercy Academy, the largest contribution in the Main Line private school’s history.
Holy Ghost’s history dates back
to 1897 when it was founded as Holy Ghost Apostolic College. It is now situated on a 52-acre campus located just outside of Philadelphia.
The school has 458 students enrolled for the start of the 202526 school year, according Business Journal research, and tuition is $27,250 per year.
THOUGHT LEADER:
KEVIN BURKE
Principal Holy Ghost Prep
Kevin Burke has served as Holy Ghost Prep’s principal since July, 2019. His leadership has impacted all areas of Holy Ghost Prep, including curriculum development, strategic planning, faculty professional development, enrollment, financial sustainability, and student life. Prior to Holy Ghost Prep, Burke served for 10-plus years as an administrator at St. Augustine Prep in New Jersey, another premier all-boys, Catholic independent school. Burke holds a bachelor’s degree in financial economics from Moravian University in Bethlehem, Pa. He earned his master’s degree in educational leadership from Villanova University and is working on his doctorate in organizational leadership at Stockton University. Kevin lives in South Jersey with his wife Carla and three children.
Holy Ghost Prep is known for developing lifelong learners and leaders. How do you accomplish that in an ever-changing world?
It is a daunting challenge to consider how the rapid pace of an ever-changing world will shape education and our responsibility to prepare students for college, career, and life. At Holy Ghost Prep, we not only accept that challenge; we embrace it. For 128 years, we have met change with purpose, remaining steadfast in our mission “to form young men morally, intellectually, and spiritually in the Spiritan tradition.” The future will always require learners and leaders with strong moral character, well-developed intellects, and unwavering values.
At HGP, we develop the whole person, equipping our students to navigate, and even thrive, in the fast-moving currents of change. We believe that while change is inevitable, the growth required to meet it is a choice. Our young men choose to lean in, to learn continuously, and to lead with integrity. They cultivate the adaptability, resilience, and vision needed to confront challenges head-on and to transform obstacles into opportunities.
Our students commit to shaping the future itself. They opt into a life of purpose, guided by faith no matter how swiftly the world evolves.
There are a number of impressive all-boys private high schools in the Philadelphia area. What distinguishes Holy Ghost Prep in providing an allboys education?
The Philadelphia area is blessed to have many impressive schools for high school boys. We admire our peer all-boys schools, especially those with likeminded missions in the Catholic faith. A distinguishing characteristic of HGP is an intentionally small student body. Our enrollment is approximately 460 young men. This results in smaller class sizes, more opportunities for individual engagement and a curriculum that focuses on the students in the classroom, not a generic curriculum meant for anyone. We believe that the small school setting allows each student to bring his unique gifts to our community, and those unique gifts are recognized and celebrated. In this setting, young men can find spaces and opportunities specifically designed to engage the mind
of a teenage boy. Our commitment to understanding how young men learn is critical to creating an academic, athletic, spiritual, and social environment for them to learn, grow, and prepare for future opportunities.
Holy Ghost Prep’s innovative curriculum includes multiple institutes, specific in-depth areas of study for students who think they may want to make their career in that particular area. How many institutes does Holy Ghost Prep have, what do the students do in these institutes, and how many institutes will the school ultimately have?
In the 2025-26 academic year, Holy Ghost Prep will offer five institutes— medical, engineering, business, art, and Spiritan (theology). The design of each institute is different based on intended outcomes, but there are requirements and core concepts for an institute to be credentialed. The institute must connect with a course offered. The students in that class elect to enroll in the institute. The purpose of our innovative institutes is to learn college/career skills and build professional networks in a field of study
by exposing them to professionals and real-world experiences. We design each institute to increase the student’s capacity to understand the bigger picture and the many opportunities in the field of study. Each institute includes a capstone experience to culminate the year-long program. Each institute includes professional partnerships with organizations which we are grateful to have. These partnerships provide different opportunities specific to the institute’s area of study. We are exploring additional institutes in artificial intelligence and law for future years.
Another outside-the-classroom learning opportunity for Holy Ghost Prep students in your Spiritan immersion program. Please explain how the immersion program is structured and what is the benefit, in your opinion, of these immersion experiences for your students and for your faculty?
Our Spiritan immersion program offers experiences that include international/domestic travel, service
learning, professional development, and academic research to increase hands-on learning opportunities to improve a student’s critical thinking skills and character development. This is an experiential learning program that goes outside the classroom setting to provide opportunities aligned with the mission of HGP “to form young men morally, intellectually, and spiritually” and connected to the core components of a Spiritan school. Students can participate in a student exchange program with a peer Spiritan all-boys school in Ireland. Other students do community service in Mexico, West Virginia, and the local Philadelphia community. Students learn about leadership, our Catholic identity, Spiritan youth ministry, Francophone cultures, art, and poverty by visiting places like Duquesne University, Italy, Portugal, Harlem, and local communities in the Philadelphia area. It is important to remember that students do not learn from experiences. Students learn from reflecting on our experiences. To ensure that learning, HGP has academic requirements for each experience to guide how our students should reflect on each
experience to learn and develop to be men of service in this world.
What does a future-ready student look like leaving Holy Ghost Prep?
A future-ready Holy Ghost Prep graduate is a young man who embodies the school’s Spiritan mission, strong academic preparation, and commitment to service. The young man will leave our campus as an independent thinker who can analyze complex problems, communicate clearly, and adapt to the challenges of an ever-changing world. The latest World Economic Forum identified coachability as a critical future skill to help individuals and organizations thrive. We are confident that our graduates are ready for the future. The skill of coachability comes from a student’s curiosity which drives him to embrace lifelong learning, while his resilience enables him to persevere through obstacles and approach setbacks as opportunities for growth. As a graduate of a Catholic, Spiritan school, he is guided by integrity, compassion, and justice, living out his faith in both word and action. He understands the