Jack Schweizer: First, thank you for taking the time to meet with us. I appreciate it. And congratulations on completing your first year as principal at SLUH.

Ian Gibbons: We’re almost there. Not done yet. As I always say, the year always seems to end with a whimper. Just phonetic, phonetic, phonetic and then, whew, it’s just over. We’re not there yet.

JS: Yeah. But now that you’ve almost spent a year here, what are your thoughts on SLUH. What have you learned about the school? Was it different than your expectations? Stuff like that.

IG: Sure, no, it’s a very privileged time to be here for the bicentennial. It’s great to be a part of a school that’s undergoing a lot of major projects right now, including a new president who will be arriving, curriculum review, a lot of big technology work, a capital campaign that is very exciting and some major construction projects that are coming. So a lot of big things. And, you know my biggest concern is to make sure that the school runs well and all these other things are kind of icing on the project. But you know it’s tremendous to have the context of all of those pieces. And most importantly the bicentennial, that’s a great framing device.

JS: Yeah, this is definitely a time of change, and like you said, commemorating the 200 year anniversary. But what have you learned about the identity of the school? What have you learned about SLUH as a whole?

IG: Yeah, SLUH is just deeply tied to the community. And I knew this. I grew up in St. Louis. And you know the big question of St. Louis is allegedly ‘where did you go to high school?’. And that’s no less of a question today than it was you know when I graduated from high school. And you know everyone knows SLUH, but now that I’m very aware to look out for it, I see SLUH bumper stickers everywhere. I see people that recognize my SLUH attire and will immediately comment about it and it’s an omnipresent force within the city. And I think largely for very very good things. Sometimes people hold us to a standard. It’s good, but it can be challenging to live up to that and that’s kind of our duty as a 200 year old school. People will look at other schools and not necessarily hold them to that standing. But I think that’s right. I think we bring upon ourselves in our mission a sense of leadership and a sense of duty to pave the way for a strong education.

JS: Yeah, definitely. Yeah people talk about the perception of SLUH a lot—what people from the outside think about it. I think certainly it’s considered an academically rigorous school, with deep history. Do you worry, is that one of your concerns, making sure the perception of SLUH as this great school continues, and how do you try to keep that identity going forward?

IG: Yeah, I don’t worry about SLUH losing it’s way on my watch or things kind of falling apart because I’m so immersed in the mission of the school. Everything that we do in a daily basis, a quarterly basis, an annual basis, and even five and ten year plans, I put through that lenses of is that moving the mission forward. And the mission of the school of course is the education, formation of our young men to be Catholic, Christian leaders into St. Louis and into the world. And as long as we’re doing that, we’re doing the mission of the school. And so that means the academics, the service, the pastoral, the mini-conversations, the co-curriculars, everything, has to be moving that forward. We’re not distracted by other things. It can become very easy to become distracted, and that’s why part of my job is to keep that clarity and you know provide a stay against any sorts of confusion against that.

JS: Yeah, definitely. So what do you think the strengths of the school are now that you’ve been here, and I know you mentioned a few just there.

IG: The strengths of the school include our history, our standing in the city, our faculty, our alumni, our incredible foundation and building the Backer family helped us to have. And I think the Jesuits are a real piece to that legacy as well. The Jesuits are constantly affirming what we’re doing but they also hold us accountable. And we see that through conversations. You know when I got to Jesuit hall and St. Louis University to meet some of my brother Jesuits, they speak a lot about this school. They’re very very proud of it and they’re very concerned that it will do well into the future.

JS: Yeah, this is sort of a concern I’ve noticed among people in the community. It’s common knowledge that the vocations to the Jesuits and the priesthood are declining. How do you try to maintain this Jesuit identity in the school as fewer Jesuits are entering?

IG: That’s important. Part of that is the way we form faculty, the way we form students. Part of that is the promotion of vocations as well. We don’t just say, it’s a more complicated world and unless people are going into religious life, we keep pushing that as an issue. And I stay in touch with the graduates of my other schools where I’ve been, and promote vocations with them as well. And you know guys here, I definitely push that. I also work hard in hiring and retention for mission, which is a big part of my job as principal, to keep that mission going. And for example, we’re losing two Jesuits, and we don’t just say, ‘oh that’s a shame, we only have five Jesuits next year.’ You know I went out beating the bush to find another Jesuit and we found a great Jesuit who’s coming next year. In fact, he’s the gold standard for regents coming into regency. Every other school in the province wanted this guy, and we’ve got him coming.

JS: Really? That’s awesome. Well what do you see as the school’s weaknesses now that you’ve been here for a year now. What do you want to change and where do you think the school can improve?

IG: There’s a lot of challenges. I think our culture and distractions are a real challenge. You know things aren't easy out there for young people, for adults, for anyone, and this school provides an oasis for those things. But in order for it to be an oasis, we have to be true to our mission. We can’t be corrupted by the allure of glittery things that get us off track. Whether they’re technology, just kind of the craziness of the world at times. And we’re also preparing you to be a part of the world. So to create a mindfulness is a real challenge. If we just simply give you lots of rules and say follow the rulebook, as soon as you get out there, you’re going to struggle with all the gray areas with rules. So part of that mindfulness is helping you to develop an understanding of the complexities of the world and the stance that we take. Obviously resources are always a challenge and we want to avoid just simply raising tuition at the high levels every year. We want to avoid complacency. We want to avoid missing key developments in the world, be it technology, be it new educational ideas. Sticking our heads in the sand when something like the Stockley verdict happens or an economic crisis hits. Whatever is happening out there we have to take that into consideration in here as well.

JS: Right. And some of those problems—well, all schools face those problems, right.

IG: Of course.

JS: Distractions, technology, the culture.

IG: But we run this school, and this is our project. I’ve helped run other great schools but my mission is this one.

JS: Right. Have you noticed any problems that are specific to SLUH that you haven’t seen at previous schools?

IG: Sure, I mean there are some peculiarities to the building, to the address, to the population. I mean at Regis in New York, we weren’t dealing with some of the history of St. Louis just as SLU High isn’t dealing with some of the challenges of being a global city like New York. It’s just different. You know the fact of where our students come from. Their demographics, their geography, all of those things are peculiar to SLUH to some degree.

JS: Right, SLUH definitely suffers from the problem of the area, and like you said, St. Louis is also very divided. But, I guess what I’m asking now is how have you come to learn about SLUH. How have you learned about the area of St. Louis. I know you grew up here. But you know, how–

IG: It’s very different. In some ways, it’s much stronger local identities. I was just in Dogtown the other day, just off campus. And you know the claiming of that as an area with pride and signage and that’s new and that's a good thing. You know I look at what’s happened at the grove and some areas downtown that look much much better but I also know some of the areas north of Delmar, they’re in much worse shape than they were before. And obviously there are some real problems in the city with violence and elements of all kinds of systemic challenges that are different that you know can be bracing to see and painful to watch and you know we factor that into the calculus of what we do to work on for the future.

Liam John: How do you govern a school when there’s so many outside controversies and chaos going on outside. How do you try to take that and make a great educational program?

IG: Right, that’s a great question and part of it is staying focussed on the project of formation of our students and developing faculty and not simply being distracted. You know this is an example from New York but after the 2016 elections there was a lot of people in New York and other places that they wanted us to constantly have these assembles to deal with and you know we said every time the president texts or says something that you don’t like who ever the president is you can't just drop everything and focus on that because that is not a teaching moment. It can become a maraj of things we have to deal with. So not only are there problems in St. Louis, in the country and the world. Our primary mission is not to solve those. Our primary mission is to create young men who are part of the solution and that's the project almost like a factory of leaders. That's where our trust and faith are. We were not set up to be a think tank or a social agency that simply picks some social issues and just solves them and that takes some doing. You see the hurt and pain in the world and everyone’s nature instinct in this building is we need to solve that.

JS: Great. We also talked at the end of the first semester in December and you mentioned like this struggle between balancing time with students and getting to know the faculty and you know your job and working and there's sort of a disconnect there as the principle. WHat have you done to work to bridge that disconnect?

IG: That's constant tension and one that I have not satisfactorily solved but there are things I am doing to work on that. Areas where I think I have done a really good job is getting out there and being with the faculty, being in the classes, observing, meeting with different students on different projects, I think I have been a good chaplain for sports and getting to a lot of games. I have been to every concert, every theater production, and I love that stuff so that’s costless for me. Doing retreats, service projects, liturgies. I think I get very good marks for that stuff. I think I get very low marks for the daily stuff. You know just getting out there and just the banter in the hallways and being able to connect to guys. Drop ins and just being part of classes. Attend student meetings. Get to some of the other student activities. There is huge swaths of student activities that I just didn’t get to. I think I get horrid marks for like activity period. Getting out there, it just seems like that’s the time when people are able to meet and deal with kind of the crisis situation and more long term things and the cost of that is maybe 1/20 activity periods I actually have free. Invariantly when I have it free, ring ring, I have a phone call. I think it’s mixed.

JS: Do you feel like you know the faculty better now though better than you did when you first came here?

IG: So I got to know some of them, I was able to make a couple trips here from New York as I was closing out my tenure at Regis. That was helpful. Also you know the website and that little quiz game to get to know people. Do you know that? On WhatWhere?

JS: No, I haven’t heard of that.

IG: It’s available for anyone and you can give yourself a quiz and the faculty can pick a class. You can pick random faces. You have to either pick them out like multiple choice or there’s AP style where you have to type in the names.

JS: So you guys played this at the beginning of the school year?

IG: No, I just play it myself.

JS: So all the information is already out there?

IG: Yeah. It’s on the what where. It’s how you can look up anything.

LJ: In what ways have you brought your Jesuit identity into this school and how has your spiritual life grown throughout the year?

IG: Right. So, I am the first Jesuit principal we have had in about 34 years, so there’s not an easy model to look at that and actually it's even more complicated than that. Until this year, I am the first Jesuit principal in like five years nationally in all the 62 high schools. Interestly, this year, there are two Jesuit principals. We have a school called Walsh Jesuit just outside of Cleveland, OH. and they have got a Jesuit principal as well. Interestingly, I was in noviciant with him. My noviciant class is taking over the Jesuit high schools. How else? Obviously, I am very involved in the liturgical life in the school. It is a very big part of my own formation and spiritual commitments. It holds me accountable too. Seeing you guys at liturgy, mass, in theology classes having conversations, I think students can sometimes diminish how important those things are for us to witness. The value of you guys in prayer. The value of you guys involved in service. Even committing to come to a school that requires more of you because you are a christian, because you are trying to live up to the Jesuit ideals. That for me is inspiring. I have to hold myself to commitments the things we have to do as a Jesuit. One of them is we have to make an eight day silent retreat every year and finding the time to do that in this job is very difficult, but I have to be a beast and make sure I get that in. For example, when we get out of here and after graduation and grades are in, I am leaving to go to graduation in New York to the guys I've worked with there and then I am doing my eight day retreat up by West Point.

LJ: That’s great to see that your spiritual life does not get bogged down by the job that you are in.

IG: And, I help out in some parishes over the weekends that help my spiritual life as well.

JS: What have been some of the things you have worked on this year—your accomplishments, things you have changed and things you are really happy with?

IG: I think we have made tremendous progress on the curriculum review. I know, for you guys, that’s hard and kind of an abstract thing, but thats been a huge project for us. Working on getting to know the school and taking the discipline to not just make changes and going off gut instinct, but to really get to know the community and making some adaptations. I am really proud of how we have worked the bicentennial. Significant programs coming into fruition like with what we did with the eclipse. I think were we were leaders in the St. Louis region in that and I am really glad the way we handled that. The way we handled incidents we had in the city like the Stockley Verdict, like some of the racial tension, some of our commitments to financial aid for our families. That takes a lot of work with the auction and being a part of advancement projects. I don't have a whole lot of time to do them, but I make the time.

JS: Was it scary jumping into the school amid the two hundred year anniversary with all this tradition and all of this change going on and you sort of as an outsider?

IG: To some degree, but I think I have some advantages being a Jesuit for 23 years. I am a member of this province even though I’ve lived outside of it. I know a lot of the characters. I knew Fr. Marco and Fr. Houlihan. Those are people that, even though i have been away for awhile, it is a reuniting with them. I think there is a calming influence being a Jesuit. I think families really appreciate that tradition.

JS: Yeah, definitely. So I guess one of the things we definitely want to close with is what, going into the future, what do you hope to see at SLUH? That can be from either changes you hope to implement or in general what you hope for the school.

IG: Some of the goals for next year, I didn’t get to talk about this, but one thing I am very proud of is the changes we have made in leadership opportunities for students. We have revamped the student council and that is going to be a dynamic force at every grade level and then for the whole school and the different capacity of developing those students. I think that is going to be a huge payoff. I think that's going to be wonderful. The curriculum review will be a big project for next year. This year we did all our school wide goals for curriculum and our department goals this year. Next year, we will be doing each course required for graduation, and all the goals and mapping out how that will pay out so every section of that class will be uniform in content. Delivery will be a little different depending on the teacher, but the content will be uniform. We will also be working on assessment piece of curriculum. We are working on our accreditation review next year which will be a major project. There is a group called Advanced Ed that takes care of accreditation for public and private schools every ten years you go through it, and we are up next year, so that will be a big project. I served on the accreditation team for a public high school here in the city to get up to speed with the program. I don’t know how I found that time to do it, but I did. I am very grateful I had that experience. That will serve myself and the school well having done that. And, a new president. That’s pretty big.

JS: I imagine you will be working with him a lot, especially in his transition.

IG: I have known him for many years. We have never worked anywhere at the same time, but you need all of us a flow chart to figure out who was where when. His first teaching job was at Rockhurst high school in Kansas City, he left and Mr. Laughlin came. He left to come to SLUH, and then I came. And then, I left there to go to Boston, and now Mr. Laughlin is going there. My first teaching job as a Jesuit was at Regis Jesuit in Denver, CO.. I left there, and then, Mr. Carruthers came there. Now, Mr. Carruthers is leaving there to come here. It’s all a big cycle. That’s a great strength of the JSN (Jesuit School Network) that our schools integrate, so what Mr. Carruthers learned as a student at St. Pauls, he brought to Regis Jesuit and SLUH. What I learned in New York, I bring here. It’s all good stuff.

JS: Well, on that topic, what have you brought from New York?

IG: A lot of experiences. Like Thomas Edison says, “I have never failed at a project, I have just found a thousand ways that didn’t work.” The things that you do well are instructional, but also, the ways that they didn't work so well are also instructional. That is a part of mindfulness is understanding how pieces all fit together. That experience just makes one strong.

JS: Do you have any plans for the summer? I know you mentioned you will be in New York for the retreat.

IG: Yeah. Tampa Bay and Naples with family and get some down time there, and a lot of curriculum work here and getting ready for next year.

LJ: Sounds good. Thank you!

JS: Great. Is it okay if we email you too if we think of anything else?

IG: Oh yeah, of course.

JS: Great, thank you.