Cover Story also included a backstage tour given by the Met’s longtime wardrobe supervisor, Bill Malloy, P’12, complete with a visit to the costume shop, the domain of another Prep parent, head costumer Elissa T. Iberti, P’07. Scholars also traveled to the Brooklyn Academy of Music to see the Paul Taylor Dance Company and to the New Jersey Performing Arts Center to hear Andre Watts and the New Jersey Philharmonic. For future entrepreneurs and “Shark Tank” fans, there was the Babson Rocket Pitch, focusing on new, innovative products and ideas. Those interested in a career in law were invited to the courtroom of Justice Eduardo Padro of the New York State Supreme Court. A program of “Sheehan Summers” has been created for students as well. After freshman year, scholars attend the Sheehan Leadership Retreat at St. Edmund’s Enders Island in Mystic, Connecticut. During the course of this retreat, amidst beautiful surroundings, students are led by older members of the Ignatian Scholars Team and Prep faculty and staff. Major themes include identifying one’s leadership style; obstacles to leadership; Ignatian leadership; and teamwork. There’s also time for fun and decompression after a busy first year of high school. After sophomore year, students may apply for a grant to attend a program of interest to them, generally one offered through Saint Peter’s Prep. Last year Robert Bulka, ’17 used his funding to travel with fellow Prep students to Bethel, Alaska on Christian Service immersion trip. Reflecting on his time at Prep, and the fact that without the Sheehan Scholarship, he would not have been able to afford Prep, he said: “The
Robert Bulka, ’17 (seated) used his
Sheehan summer enrichment grant to participate in a Prep Campus Ministry service trip to Scholarship has been the greatest gift I’ve ever received; it has allowed me Bethel, Alaska. to go to a school in which I have found a home like no other, and it has blessed me with a slew of opportunities the likes of which I could have never imagined.”
Post junior year, students look beyond Prep for an enrichment experience. The exercise of sifting through a myriad of exciting offerings at many colleges and universities and then writing an engaging grant proposal in itself is enlightening, and can be considered a dress rehearsal for the
First Class All the Way The first class of graduating Sheehan Scholars, earned nearly five million dollars in merit- and need-based aid for college. The graduates are pictured here with program advisors Juan Arteaga and Trish Fitzpatrick, P’07,’16. Left to right, back row: Declan Wollard (Fordham University), Jose Adelfo Maceda (Penn State), Clark Burnett (Yale University), Patrick Huggins (Rutgers Honors College), Marc David Wright (Fordham University), Quinn Williamson (Howard University), Stephen Oro (Stevens Institute of Technology), Daniel Garrett (Fordham University), and Richard Messina (New York University). Front row: Josiah Peace Ng (Webb Institute), Christian Herrera (Rutgers University), Nathaniel Soliven (Marquette University), Nicholas Kaniewski (Stevens Institute of Technology), Carl Emil Gocon (Seton Hall University), Steven Millad (Northeastern University), Tej Jolly (Johns Hopkins University), and Nicholas Magnotti (Northeastern University).
8 Fall FALL 2015 n SPPREP.ORG n PREP MAGAZINE