St. Mary's Academy (SMA) is a

Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

, independent day school in the Loretto tradition located in

Cherry Hills Village The City of Cherry Hills Village is a home rule municipality located in Arapahoe County, Colorado, United States. The city population was 6,442 at the 2020 United States Census. Cherry Hills Village is a part of the Denver–Aurora–Lakewood, C ...

, Colorado. Founded by the

Sisters of Loretto The Sisters of Loretto or the Loretto Community is a Catholic religious institute that strives "to bring the healing Spirit of God into our world." Founded in the United States in 1812 and based in the rural community of Nerinx, Kentucky, the ...

in 1864, St. Mary's Academy educates boys and girls. St. Mary's Academy is composed of a co-ed Lower School (co-ed pre-kindergarten through grade 5) and Middle School (co-ed grades 6-8), and continues its tradition as a college preparatory high school for girls (grades 9-12). Three times the U.S. Department of Education has honored St. Mary's Academy as a School of Excellence (a program initially titled Blue Ribbon Schools). St. Mary's Academy High School offers 16 AP courses.

History

St. Mary's Academy is one of Denver's pioneer institutions. It is the oldest continuously operating pre-collegiate school in Denver and has the distinction of awarding the first high school diploma in 1875, a year before Colorado became a state. Originally situated at 14th and California Streets on the edge of the prairie, in 1911 the school moved and built next door to Margaret “Molly” Brown on Pennsylvania Avenue. Needing additional space and recognizing that families were moving to the suburbs, St. Mary's Academy located to its current home in the early 1950s. Begun as a school for girls, boys were welcomed into all Lower and Middle School grades in the mid-1970s.

Activities

*Numerous Destination Imagination teams form every year in Lower School. In 2014 an all-boy team finished in first place in the Scientific Category at the Global Finals. *Middle School students travel to a buffalo ranch in Northern Colorado, Keystone Science Center, the East Coast, and Cochiti Pueblo in New Mexico for service. *In its first year, the high school robotics team won awards in the 2013-2014 Denver and regional

BEST Robotics BEST (''Boosting Engineering, Science, and Technology'') is a national six-week robotics competition in the United States held each fall, designed to help interest middle school and high school students in possible engineering careers. The games a ...

Competition. They were the only all-girls team in that competition and are one of a handful of all-girl teams participating in the international

FIRST Robotics Competition FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) is an international high school robotics competition. Each year, teams of high school students, coaches, and mentors work during a six-week period to build robots capable of competing in that year's game that weig ...

in 2014-2015. *St. Mary's Academy offers opportunities to further engage with the Loretto Community: service work at Loretto Motherhouse in Kentucky, a trip to the United Nations and advocacy training at the El Paso/Juarez border.

Athletics

Affiliations

Association of Colorado Independent Schools (ACIS)
National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS)

National Catholic Education Association The National Catholic Educational Association (NCEA) is a private, professional educational membership association of over 150,000 educators in Catholic schools, universities, and religious education programs. It is the largest such organization ...

National Coalition of Girls’ Schools

Colorado High School Activities Association The Colorado High School Activities Association (CHSAA) is the governing body for all high school activities throughout the state of Colorado Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United Stat ...

3A Metropolitan League

Notable alumnae

* Condoleezza Rice,

U.S. Secretary of State The United States secretary of state is a member of the executive branch of the federal government of the United States and the head of the U.S. Department of State. The office holder is one of the highest ranking members of the president's Ca ...

, 2005-2009 *

Jane Lubchenco Jane Lubchenco (born December 4, 1947) is an American environmental scientist and marine ecologist who teaches and conducts research at Oregon State University. Her research interests include interactions between the environment and human well-be ...

, Administrator of the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), 2009-2013 *

Donna J. Haraway Donna J. Haraway is an American Professor Emerita in the History of Consciousness Department and Feminist Studies Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a prominent scholar in the field of science and technology studies. Sh ...

, Professor Emerita in the

History of Consciousness History of Consciousness is the name of a department in the Humanities Division of the University of California, Santa Cruz with a 50+ year history of interdisciplinary research and student training in "established and emergent disciplines and fiel ...

at the

University of California, Santa Cruz The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of California system. Located on Monterey Bay, on the edge of ...

; scholar in the field of science and technology studies; and influential feminist philosopher.

Notes and references

"St Mary’s Academy: 150 Years of Courage, Tenacity and Vision"
(September–October 2014 issue of Colorado Heritage, the magazine of History Colorado).

External links

* {{authority control Schools in Arapahoe County, Colorado Catholic secondary schools in Colorado Educational institutions established in 1864 1864 establishments in Colorado Territory