Florida Catholic | Catholic Leadership Education

Educators granted leadership studies

John Paul, II High School teacher is in the first class of a funded program in Catholic educational leadership.

AMY M. FERRARA | FLORIDA CATHOLIC STAFF

Published: 09.14.07

MIAMI SHORES | "Legacy" is what they call themselves, and a legacy is what they have set out to achieve. Yet, it doesn’t seem like such an impossible goal for the 30 first-year students in Barry University’s Catholic Educational Leadership program, especially when working under the tutelage of a nun nicknamed "Sister Super."

Franciscan Sister Phyllis Superfisky, associate professor of education at Barry University, helped to organize the program’s first class. For three weeks in June, Catholic school principals and teachers seeking degrees to become principals traveled from the six Florida dioceses and one archdiocese to study together at the Miami Shores campus. It was the first of a three-phase higher education program that will enable them to earn their master’s or education specialist degrees within three consecutive semesters from Barry’s Adrian Dominican School of Education.

The program is the result of a $875,000 grant made by the Adrian Dominican Sisters in 2006 from a large bequest to them for Catholic education in Florida from Marie V. Gedron. To distinguish it from other recipients of Gedron grant funding, the program is also called Revitalizing Catholic Identity in Catholic Education, or Project RICE.

"We have principals and future principals who come together to experience learning as a cohort," said Sister Superfisky. "They see that they are not alone. They develop a network."

One such person is Matt Olesnevich, social studies, history, geography and leadership teacher at John Paul II High School in Tallahassee. Olesnevich is also the head football and girls’ soccer coach. Nicknamed "Rolling Rock" by Sister Superfisky because of their common Pennsylvanian heritage, Olesnevich entered the program to earn a master’s degree toward his goal of becoming a Catholic school principal.

Enthusiastic about his experience, he exclaimed, “I learned more in those three weeks than I ever have.”

Like his Legacy classmates, Olesnevich was selected by his local diocesan superintendent of Catholic schools to apply with Barry University for Project RICE. It was his energy, explained Diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee Superintendent Susan Mueller, and his enthusiasm that led to the choice.

In the summer of 2008, a new group of 30 students will begin as the second-year class. In the summer of 2009, the final of the three classes will enter Project RICE to begin the three-year academic program. As those students begin, Olesnevich and his classmates will graduate, establishing their legacy as the first graduates of the Catholic Educational Leadership program.

In order to reach that point, however, Olesnevich must complete courses such as spirituality and the art of leadership, educational leadership, administrative applications of technology, principalship and law for the nonpublic school.

"(The program) teaches the whole person,” Olesnevich said. “Mind, body and soul."

Because of Legacy’s experiences together at Barry University, they will see, according to Sister Superfisky, that (Catholics) are a "community rich in our diversity."

Educators granted leadership studies

John Paul, II High School teacher is in the first class of a funded program in Catholic educational leadership.

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