Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School
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 Founder's Hall, the main academic building |
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| Established: | 1799 |
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| School type: | Catholic, all girls |
| President: | Sr. Mary Berchmans Hannan |
| Headmaster: | Daniel Kerns |
| Enrollment: | approximately 450 |
| School Song: | Cor Jesu |
| School Mascot: | The Cubs - The Gold Team Tigers and The White Team Bears |
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| Location: | 1524 35th Street, NW Washington, DC 20007 |
| Phone: | 202-337-3350 |
| Website: | http://www.visi.org/ |
Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School was founded in Washington, DC in 1799 and has continued for over 200 years as a college preparatory school for women. School literature states that their curriculum is rooted in the virtues of faith, vision, and purpose. Visitation currently enrolls approximately 450 students in the ninth through twelfth grades. Visitation is a Catholic school founded in the Salesian tradition, but the school community includes many students and faculty who are not of the Roman Catholic faith.
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[edit] Life at Georgetown Visitation
Located on more than twenty acres of land in the heart of Georgetown, Washington, DC, the Visitation campus offers its students state-of-the art academic, sports, and performing arts facilities. Students enroll in a wide variety of Advanced Placement courses and one hundred percent of Visitation students attend college. Students play on a wide variety of athletic teams, including lacrosse, field hockey, soccer, tennis, basketball, track, cross country, swimming and diving, and crew. The Visitation Masqueraders mount musical and theatrical productions each year in the Catharine E. Nolan Center for the Performing Arts. There is also a Dance Ensemble, Choir, Orchestra, and Madrigal Singers and the groups have performed at various events around the city, including in the Kennedy Center’s Christmas program.
There are also many clubs and publications at the school. Student publications include the award-winning student newspaper, The Wicket, the Green Gate yearbook, and also a literary magazine produced and edited by students entitled "The Georgetowner." Students also participate in the International Relations Club, Ski Club, Social Justice Club, and Model United Nations, among others. Students have the opportunity to serve as representatives of the student body both in the Student Government and on the Honor Board, which is charged with ensuring the integrity of the Visitation Honor Code.
Each graduate performs at least eighty hours of community service, but many students offer hundreds of hours of their time throughout their four years at Visi. Many students participate in community service immersion trips that take place domestically and abroad. Recent trips have been to Peru, St. Francis Inn in Philadelphia, and an Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Each year, several Georgetown Visitation students also participate in Vistory, a weeklong program of Salesian sisterhood and community service with students from other Visitation schools around the country. Some students make long-term service commitments through tutoring programs with local public schools, Best Buddies, and Saturday School, a program on the Visitation campus. Students also share their community service experiences with their parents through programs like Together for Others and Gleaning the Fields.
[edit] Visitation tradition
There are many traditions at Georgetown Visitation. On her first day at Visitation, each student is assigned to either the Gold Team or the White Team. All family members are assigned to the same team to prevent intra-family strife. Throughout the year, the teams compete to win points through athletic competitions, quiz bowls, and canned food drives. Faculty and administrators join in, especially for the big fall and spring Gold/White games. Other popular Visitation events include Marshmallow Roast, Father/Daughter Masses and dances, Grandparents Day, Diversity Week, Ring Ceremony, Together for Others, Retreats, Snow Ball and Snowflake.
Visitation has often held its graduation ceremonies at Georgetown University’s Gaston Hall. Graduates are outfitted in matching white gowns designed by Visitation graduate Kathlin Argiro and process through the historic Green Gate with long white gloves and long-stem red roses. Graduates of the class of 2001 shook hands with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice before she gave their graduation speech.
[edit] History of Visitation
Georgetown Visitation was founded at the request of Archbishop Leonard Neale, president of Georgetown College. The Visitation order is Salesian, basing its spirituality on the teachings of Saint Francis de Sales and Saint Jane Frances de Chantal. One of St. Francis’s central teachings is, “Be who you are and be that well.” A second teaching still imparted to the students of Visitation is, “Nothing is so strong as gentleness and nothing so gentle as real strength.” While the Sisters of the Visitation no longer teach the majority of classes at the school, they maintain an active presence in daily life there by teaching homeroom, participating in school events, and reaching out to students and their families.
The convent and school at Georgetown Visitation have been active participants in the history of Washington, DC. When it was still illegal to teach a slave to read, the Sisters of the Visitation opened a Saturday school where they would offer a free education to any young girl who wished to learn. Both free blacks and slaves learned at the Visitation convent. During the War of 1812, the Visitation campus was used as a hospital for soldiers wounded when the British set fire to the city of Washington. The walls and corridors of Founders Hall display the family heirlooms and portraits that were given to the school in lieu of tuition payment during the hard economic times of the American Civil War, World War I and World War II.
In 1993, a fire destroyed the historic main academic building of the campus, Founders Hall. Since then, the campus has been revitalized with a new Founders Hall, the Catharine E. Nolan Center for the Performing Arts, and the Sarah and Charles T. Fischer Athletic Center completed for the bicentennial of the school in 1999, and the renovation of both St. Joseph’s Hall and the St. Bernard Library in 2002 and 2003.
[edit] Notable alumnae
Kathlin Argiro, designer
Mary Early, sculptor
Harriet Lane, US First Lady
Emily Warren Roebling, Brooklyn Bridge engineer
Margaret Gorman, First Miss America
[edit] Notable parents
John Bruton, European Union ambassador to the United States and former prime minister of Ireland
Chris Matthews, journalist and political commentator
Kathleen Matthews, former TV anchor
Mark Brunell, Washington Redskins quarterback
