Mission & History
Our Mission:
The Mount is a faith community serving our students and their families
with mercy, compassion and an exceptional Christ-centered Catholic
education.
Our Identity:
Mount St. Mary Catholic High School has a unique identity. We embrace
the values of the Sisters of Mercy, who founded the school in 1903 and
remain co-sponsors with the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City. This
identity gives our distinctive curriculum an emphasis on service and
action. As part of The Mount experience, the religious studies
curriculum gives every student an opportunity to be placed as a
volunteer in the community.
The Mount also encourages students to address community concerns.
Some student body opportunities for activism and service have taken
place because students took the initiative in defining the need and
proposed responses with moral and ethical values along with the
support of their classmates. This year alone, Mount students have
packed food boxes, partnered with the local neighborhood organizations
to make improvements, collected toys for Catholic Charities,
established tutoring sessions, ventured into political activism and
successfully engaged community leaders- some even invited to speak at
our school. Therefore the spirit of mercy is found not only in our
classrooms, but rings throughout our local community.
Our History:
In 1884, five Sisters of Mercy, at the request of Bishop Theophile
Meerschaert, traveled to what was then known as Indian Territory to
establish a school for young ladies at the Sacred Heart Mission near
Shawnee. When fire destroyed the school in 1901, the Sisters decided
to relocate to Oklahoma City on donated land on a hill just south of
downtown Oklahoma City, overlooking what is now known as the Oklahoma
River. The cornerstone was laid on December 12, 1903, and young ladies
arrived from across the United States to be educated at Mount Saint
Mary Academy. The school building stood as a landmark, one of the few
tall buildings in Oklahoma City (The yearbook says “For many years the
Academy was the sole landmark on one of the highest points in the area
now known as Capitol Hill.”)
In these years Mount St. Mary was a boarding school for young women,
and it also served as a novitiate for the Sisters of Mercy of
Oklahoma. In the 1910s, the school began admitting local young women
as day students in addition to boarding students, and a rear wing
including the cafeteria and auditorium was added in 1922. Mount St.
Mary Academy continued as a novitiate until 1929, when the Sisters of
Mercy of Oklahoma amalgamated into a union with a larger body of the
Sisters of Mercy. During these early years when Mount St. Mary
Academy functioned as a school for girls, the school graduated more
than 270 young ladies, at least 32 of whom went on to answer a
religious vocation.
In 1950, Bishop Eugene McGuinness instituted a reorganization of
Catholic schools throughout the Oklahoma City archdiocese. The Bishop
asked that Mount St. Mary be involved in this new organization, and
the sisters agreed to open enrollment to boys as well as girls for the
first time in its history. As a part of this new phase in the life of
Mount St. Mary, Father Kenneth Fulton was hired to implement an
athletic program to encourage boys to enroll at the school.
As the school grew, in 1959 a three-story wing was added to the north
of the original structure to provide more classroom space and an
auditorium. It is often referred to as the “new wing” to this day.
In 1980, a gymnasium and parking lot were added in the southwest
corner of campus.
During the 1980s and 1990s, Mount St. Mary was a pioneer in education
in Oklahoma City, developing innovative programs that are still among
the things that make a Mount Education unique. In 1991 the school was
the first in the area to implement an alternating block schedule which
better prepares students for the type of schedule they will have in
college. The school was also the first to have a fully integrated
computer network.
Other innovative programs developed at Mount St. Mary include
“Oklahoma History Summer Session” added in 1985, an intensive summer
class that takes students all over the state to visit historical
sites, and our sophomore “Community Service Learning Program” that
places 10th graders as volunteers in local community organizations.
Both programs are still strong and are an integral part of a Mount
Education.
In the spring of 2000, the Sisters of Mercy, St. Louis Region, and the
Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma City entered into a co-sponsorship
arrangement with regards to Mount St. Mary High School, making it the
first and only Catholic high school in the country to be sponsored by
both a religious order and an archdiocese.
In December 2003, the school celebrated its centennial with the
kickoff of a $6 million endowment campaign designed to secure the
school’s future for the next 100 years.
In recent years, Mount St. Mary Catholic High School, the oldest high
school in Oklahoma, has also undertaken a number of initiatives to
enhance and improve its programming and services. In the 2004-05
school year the school instituted Advanced Placement (AP) and pre-AP
curriculum in all primary subject areas. In 2005-06 the school began
a new PLUSS (Providing the Link to Unlimited Student Success) Program
to help those with learning differences excel in a college-prep
environment. Beginning in the 2013-2014 school year MSM initiated a
1:1 digital student laptop program. In 2017-2018 The Cornerstone
Program was initiated to provide an inclusive educational experience
for students with intellectual disabilities.
Mount St. Mary currently serves 400 students from all across the OKC
metro and beyond. The Rocket class of 2023 was awarded over $4 million
in college scholarships and is headed off to universities all across
the country!