A Candid Interview With St. Joseph's Academy's New President Anita Reznicek, Part II

Ladue-Frontenac Patch is conducting interviews with the heads of all the local schools. School leaders will have the opportunity to go into great detail about the present state of their institutions. This is the second of two parts with Anita Reznicek, president of St. Joseph's Academy, who took over in July after serving St. Teresa's Academy in Kansas City for 23 years.

Patch: First of all, please eleborate on St. Joe having a national noted reputation:

Anita Reznicek: First of all, it is a local school, and we have lots of national recognition. I always like to think of it as a Sisters of St. Joseph School. We are part of a network who are international. We represent an international Order of Sisters. Our sisters are in Peru, Chile, Uganda, Japan, Hawaii.

Patch: If you had a wish for one of your girls to be the first ever at one thing, what would you wish for?

Reznicek: It would be lovely if she was president of the United States. Wouldn’t that be great?

Think of the influence we'd have. What I want each of our graduates to be true to herself, a person of integrity who serves others. That’s our mandate from our sisters that she gives her gifts back to the world. We expect all of our students to have an impact on the world. We want them to make change and make the world a better place. As part of our strategic plan, these are values-driven women. With 7,000 living alums, there aren’t a lot of firsts still to go. We have doctors and lawyers and sisters who run hospitals who do the every possible job on the planet. I don’t care if they are the very best den mother of Cub Scouts, if they are value driven leaders, that’s fabulous.

We have a high profile here because we have so many women out in the community doing great things. We have a tremendous legacy.

Patch: How do you integrate students into your system here?

Reznicek: We have activities from the first day they are here. That involves our campus ministry, the prayer life of this community, the modeling from the sisters. We do try and educate her academically, spiritually, athletically—its a big program we offer. It's not just a student, it's a whole person. We want them to go down that road and mature as a young woman of great promise over the time that she is here. When they come to visit (shadow) they know. They say “this is the place for me." I can just feel it he moment they walk in. For most, it's an easy decision.

This is a school for everyone who wants to work hard. We are a college preparatory academy. If you want to do the work, we have plenty of people here to help you. It isn’t the school for a student who doesn’t want to apply herself.

Patch: Have goals changed much over the years?

Reznicek: That we want them to pursue academic excellence is the same. They learned chemistry 100 years ago. They learned Latin. We are still teaching Latin today. But now we’re teaching Chinese. That wasn’t a subject we would have had 100 years ago. But we’ve had to adapt to the times that we live in. The standards and expectations of hard work and applying their abilities and to serve God remains the same. We are much more of a global planet than we used to be. Some of the girls have been to China and were already able to use their new language skills.

Patch: How strong is your alumni association?

Reznicek: It is a really powerful group of educated women, smart women want to share their ideas with you. I met with a group of alums dating back to the 1930s and '40s. We have tremendous loyalty from the women who had great experiences here. I’ve just landed in this huge network of people.

Patch: When you left St. Teresa’s after 23 years to come here, when did you realize it was the right decision?

Reznicek: I loved the Sisters of St. Joseph and love working for them. And I thought about getting into leadership. When this opening came up in St. Louis, I thought long and hard about it. I thought this was something new and exciting and I wanted to go for. I am a lifelong learner, too, and I got to stay working for the sisters so I got a combination of new and old.

Patch: Did it have anything to do with having a better baseball team?

We’re not going to talk baseball or football. When I met the Archbishop, he said look at it this way, “we are now both Cardinals.”