Marianapolis strives to prepare our students for all aspects of college life and beyond. We are committed to helping each student grow into a successful individual as well as a contributing citizen within the global community. To that end, Marianapolis has created two targeted platforms that help empower our students to stand out within college admissions processes: The Ninth Grade Experience and The Centers of Excellence (COE).
Ninth Grade Experience
At Marianapolis, preparation for college begins the moment students step on campus freshman year. The Ninth Grade Experience focuses on fostering academic and life skills needed to succeed at Marianapolis and beyond. The Casimir Seminar and the Humanities courses make up the Ninth Grade Experience. In each, the concentration is on building skills that students can use in day-to-day life, such as critical thinking, communication, and cross-curricular learning. Ultimately, the goal is that students will depart the Ninth Grade Experience with a comprehensive understanding of high school expectations, a confident approach to time management, and a genuine enthusiasm for making connections between course content curriculum-wide.
Centers of Excellence
Subsequent to completing the Ninth Grade Experience, sophomores have the option to enroll in one of four academic centers: Business & Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Social Justice, or Health Science. The Centers of Excellence were created to facilitate hands-on, practical experience in a concentrated area of study, while retaining global engagement with the traditional curricular path. Students in each of the Centers access a uniquely curated curriculum, engage in a three-week supervised internship, and complete a senior capstone project, among other core requirements. Students who successfully complete the program in addition to the standard graduation requirements receive a specialized diploma at graduation.
The Center for Civic Engagement and Service began in 2015 as a natural extension of the School’s mission to put Catholic faith in action through service. The Center was developed to educate and prepare students interested in the fields of law, political science, non-profit work, community activism, environmental studies, public policy, government service, and beyond.
Since the inception of this Center, we have heeded to the call for more collaboration to foster diversity, equality and inclusion in our community and our world. Topics such as racism, discrimination, bias, and gender equity require probative examination and curricular illumination. It has become evident that the Center for Civic Engagement and Service needs a broader and more wide-reaching focus to fulfill its intended mission. The Center has thus been renamed the Center for Social Justice. It will now house the Civic Engagement and Service curriculum as well as other areas of Catholic Social Teaching and Social Justice not yet explored.
The Center for Social Justice will begin with core community beliefs, such as our obligation to defend the lives and dignity of marginalized and vulnerable persons. The curriculum has historically examined concepts including order, authority, principle, common good, freedom, service, and individual rights. With a refined lens, Center participants will get to question the practical implications of those ideals in past, present, and future contexts. Can all people afford to pursue peace and justice in the same way? Are there imperatives we must embrace to find common ground in shared humanity? If we are to love our neighbor as ourselves, what responsibilities and sacrifices must we each accept to ensure the common good?
For those who opt to join the Center for Social Justice and pursue concentrated studies in this realm, as well as all Marianapolis community members united by our mission to love unconditionally, we look forward to this curricular evolution and to working together towards social justice for all.
For more resources on Social Justice, please click here.
In the Innovation Center, students can opt to focus on Computer Science or on Engineering. The goal of the Center is to provide a rigorous program of study that empowers them to creatively analyze and solve problems.
By developing technical expertise, utilizing new methodologies and innovations, and practicing collaboration, students take calculated risks and learn persevere through unanticipated failures. Students use technology to research, produce, and present ideas and applications within their designated area of curricular concentration. They also use concepts from mathematics, science, and engineering to identify practical issues in the contemporary context. They explore and utilize the tools of discovery and invention to propose solutions to the problems about which they are passionate.
2021 will be the first year in which COE graduates earn the Innovation distinction alongside their diplomas. To date, internship opportunities have focused on manufacturing, architecture & structural engineering, IT & network operations, and the service industry.
Sample courses in this Center include Design Principles, Programming I, Modeling for Problem Solving, AP® Computer Science Principles, Engineering & Design, Pre Calculus/Calculus, AP® Computer Science A, and AP® Physics.
The goal of the Mark R. Russell '67 Center for Business & Entrepreneurship is to practice the interpersonal, analytical, collaborative, and leadership skills that ensure productivity in the global business environment.
Students learn about the roles of various business enterprise stakeholders including customers, employees, managers, creditors, owners, and stockholders. Students are exposed to the basic standards and metrics of financial planning; they learn in-depth about the budgeting tools, accounting processes, and profit margins that are used to evaluate the success of any business model.
Examples of courses in this Center include Business & Entrepreneurship, Legal Studies, Global Markets, Money & Trade, and Macroeconomics. Recent capstone projects have focused on business and labor relations as well as conservation and climate change. Internships accessed by 2020 graduates included collaboration with ReMax Realty, Bernardi Toyota, WINY Radio, PBS in New York, NY, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, among others. Students explored small business accounting, auto finance and sales, news reporting, event organization, as well as computer networking and telecommunication.
The Mark R. Russell '67 Center for Business & Entrepreneurship
at Marianapolis Preparatory School
On Thursday, September 17, 2020, Trinity Foundation Board Member Mark R. Russell ’67 passed away. Mr. Russell served the School tirelessly for over a decade. A member of the Executive Committee of the Board as well as the Finance Committee Chair, Mr. Russell played an integral role in ensuring community prosperity. His involvement was also admirably hands-on; Mr. Russell was instrumental in designing the Centers of Excellence, developing curriculum for the Center for Business & Entrepreneurship, and co-teaching the very first introductory course therein.
The formation of the Centers of Excellence, including curricular research and planning, began over six years ago. In addition to leading a very full professional life, Mr. Russell demonstrated extraordinary dedication in those early months, often driving through the night to attend early planning meetings. He believed profoundly in the Marianapolis experience. He reflected often on his time as a student and the teachers who instilled in him a lifelong curiosity for learning.
In that same vein, Mr. Russell wanted students in the Centers to have foundational classroom curricula as well as transformative real-life practice within each discipline. It was this combination, Mr. Russell believed, of intellectual challenge and tailored experiential learning, that would help shape the most impactful leaders of our world in the future. He noted: “With the Centers, we are rounding out the academics to make it relevant, to add a competitive niche and specialty.” Indeed, explained Mr. Russell, “The students have to be better prepared…a good academic program is not enough.”
However, Mr. Russell did not believe that hands-on education could or should be facilitated exclusively within Marianapolis’ campus or immediate community. His was a vision fueled by service. Comprehensive education, Mr. Russell believed, requires that alumni and friends of the School help build real-world connections whenever possible. He said, “We have to bring in seasoned people to make their contribution. It’s essential. The broader adjunct faculty are, the more opportunities we’ll have.” In short, diverse perspectives produce genuinely well-rounded graduates. An avid sports fan – of baseball and its history in particular – and a skillful debater across disciplines, Mr. Russell was a multi-talented role model for all. He will be remembered fondly as an alumnus, a Board member, and at his core, an educator. It is the School's great honor for Mr. Russell's name to adorn the Center of Business & Entrepreneurship.
The Mark R. Russell '67 Center for Business & Entrepreneurship will continue to grow in recognition of the man who believed in the program's promise and who personally lived the School's mission. Mr. Russell left a clear blueprint for collective responsibility: “We must look to give students a niche, a differentiation as they go to college. We must improve every year.” As we are called to elevate each and every student to thoroughly understand their world, we must instill in them the vision, passion, and plurality of skills to foster a better tomorrow. In each step we take to honor him, we will strive to live that purpose. As Mr. Russell knew intimately and demonstrated indelibly, “That is our legacy.”
The Center for Health Science is a new addition to MPrep’s Centers of Excellence Program. The effects of the global Covid-19 pandemic, environmental impacts on personal health, breakthrough treatments of serious illnesses, and the advances and promises of new technologies such as AI in the field of healthcare have opened up new interest in all health-related endeavors and point to the need for all students to become more aware of and educated about current issues in health.
Beginning in the fall of 2023, students interested in exploring the fields of medicine, public healthcare policy, global health, and medical research will have the opportunity to delve deeper into these areas through the normal avenues offered by the Centers of Excellence with specific course work, internships, and the capstone project.
Students joining this Center will look forward to courses that include: biochemistry, forensic science, anatomy and physiology, public health, the science of infectious diseases, biotechnology, and microbiology and immunology. Building on our established internship program, Center for Health Science students will seek and obtain similar real-world internship opportunities. Past health-related internships have included home health care, audiology, ophthalmology, diagnostic imaging, orthopedics, and skilled nursing.
Capstone projects can include varied focus points, including public figure & celebrity, business & labor relations, consumerism, conservation, & climate change, as well as diversity & inclusion.
Internships are coordinated on behalf of students, partnering COE participants with organizations of interest throughout the northeast United States. Whether assisting patrons with income tax preparations, processing government contracts and reports, exploring sales and insurance processes with clients, or writing access security coding, Marianapolis students prepare for the real world of employment within the real world.
Of note, the internship process has needed to shift in some cases due to restrictions in place from COVID-19. While some participants will complete a traditional internship, others will experience a virtual internship or complete an "externship." An externship model incorporates a set of interviews and independent research to help the COE participant arrive at similar experience and understanding that a hands-on partnership would foster. The internship seminar, or "pre-practicum," precedes the internship or externship experience (the "practicum").
Graduates from the Centers have matriculated to colleges and universities across the country, including Boston College, Bryant University, Connecticut College, Tufts University, New York University, Penn State, and University of Southern California. And while the Centers of Excellence allow students to sharpen their thematic focus, the rigor of the program is never prohibitive. COE scholars were recognized at graduation for superlative distinction in, among other things, varsity athletics, dance, religion, Spanish language, and mathematics.
