About Us

MSM Initiatives: A Voice for Human Dignity

Mount St. Mary provides four initiatives to respond to what we have learned about our community and how we want to move our mission forward. Each initiative includes objectives and actions completed to date that are outlined below. We will update this page regularly to reflect progress, and will continue to revise our plan to reflect the needs of our students and community. 

Click here to view the MSM Anti-Discrimination, Anti-Harassment, and Anti-Retaliation Guidelines

Initiative 1: Voices for Human Dignity: Preventing and Responding to Sexual Harassment Through Training

Mount St. Mary Catholic High School will provide mission and value-aligned training and tools to our employees, volunteers, students, and parents, so that we can effectively support human dignity in our school community.

Initiative 2: Voices for Human Dignity: Building Effective Policies and Procedures

Mount St. Mary Catholic High School will update our policies and procedures in accordance with best practices, so that we can effectively support human dignity in our school community.

Initiative 3: Voices for Human Dignity: Supporting our Community

Mount St. Mary Catholic High School will provide counseling and additional support to current and former students involved in the recent investigation.

Initiative 4: Voices for Human Dignity: A Mount St. Mary Task Force for Change

Mount St. Mary is forming a task force to engage community members in a review of specific elements of our school culture, and to make recommendations that will better align our practices to our school’s mission, vision, and dedication to being a voice for dignity and respect.

Task Force Recommendations

Principal, Laura Cain
An MSM alumna and parent, Laura has a deep-rooted love for Mount St. Mary. Laura is a 1989 graduate of MSM, and her three daughters graduated in 2016 and 2020. Laura’s stepdaughter is a current Mount St. Mary student. Laura has been in education for 27 years, 14 of those in leadership. Most recently, she served as principal at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic School and served as a member of the Steering Team for Director of Catholic Education Leadership Transition in 2021.

“I am honored to lead Mount St. Mary Catholic High School, an institution that is dear to me as an alum and parent of three graduates,” Laura Cain said. “My experience as a Catholic school leader allows me to build on the school’s tradition of excellence, making sure all programs and practices not only align with our mission and values, but move The Mount from excellent to extraordinary.”

Laura is a dynamic leader who embraces the unique culture, traditions and values of The Mount, which is a unique school governed in cooperation with co-sponsors – The Sisters of Mercy and the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City. 

“We are confident Laura will lead the school in the spirit and mission of the Sisters of Mercy and the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City. With her leadership experience, her connection to the archdiocese, The Mount and to Mercy, Laura is well positioned to move the mission of the school forward,” said Sr. Lisa Griffith, RSM, executive director of Mercy Education and Most Reverend Paul S. Coakley, Archbishop of Oklahoma City.“

Assistant Principal, David Roberts
David recently returned to The Mount after two years as secondary principal at Oklahoma Christian Academy. He has previously served Mount St. Mary for over 15 years as an English teacher and later as the Dean of Curriculum and Instruction. As assistant principal, David will assist Mrs. Laura Cain in stewarding the school’s mission and values.

“David Roberts brings exactly the right combination of expertise and experience to the new administration at MSM. He shares our commitment to form well-educated disciples of Jesus and build meaningful relationships with students. I am thrilled that God called Mr. Roberts back to The Mount,” stated incoming principal Laura Cain.

Assistant Principal, Rebecca Lane
Mrs. Lane completed her masters program and administrative internship in December 2022 and assumed the Assistant Principal role in spring of 2023. Mrs. Lane’s responsibilities include student and faculty support, federal funding and inclusion education. She also serves as our Compliance Coordinator. Mrs. Lane joins Assistant Principal David Roberts and Principal Laura Cain on the MSM Administrative Team.

“After teaching for 27 years, I am excited for the new opportunity to serve our Mount community in the role of Assistant Principal. As an assistant principal, I look forward to working with students as they find their educational courage and become Mercy driven as a student of Mount St. Mary Catholic High School,” said Mrs. Lane.

Mrs. Lane is a proud 1990 graduate of Mount St. Mary Catholic High School! 

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!