St. Louis U. High will soon choose its next principal. Throughout the past few weeks, a diverse group of representatives from SLUH have interviewed the remaining three candidates for SLUH’s principal as the search committee is trying to select the best possible candidate before the end of the calendar year.

The search committee, headed by science teacher Mary Russo and former Board of Trustees chair Tom Santel ’76, began this detailed process by casting their net wide, gathering applicants from across the country. In the past months, the list has been narrowed down to just three finalists: SLUH Director of Campus Ministry Matthew Stewart, SJ ’98; Clayton High School Principal Dan Gutchewsky, Ed.D; and Xavier High School (N.Y.) former Principal Michael LiVigni.

“I think it’s been a really good process,” said Santel. “I think we were really encouraged by the quality of the applicants, and I think the three finalists are outstanding.”

From announcing the job opening and soliciting applications to interviewing and giving tours, the search committee has worked to make sure the new principal of SLUH will be approved by the entire community. The interviews were done through multiple constituent groups in order to make the best selection.

As outlined by the job description released by the committee, the principal serves as the instructional, operational, and visionary leader of the school while modeling a living faith. The committee also stipulated that the candidate be a practicing Catholic.

“We got a nice diverse group of folks, but they each had to be a practicing Catholic, active in their faith,” said Russo. “We are a Catholic school first and foremost, as we are a Jesuit school.”

Now that the process has reached its final stage, the remaining candidates have toured the SLUH campus, met with members of the faculty and staff, and been interviewed by multiple panels. The tours, facilitated and guided by Assistant Principal for Mission Jim Linhares, helped to immerse the finalists in the community.

“It’s really wonderful to spend some time with them personally, informally, to get to know them,” said Linhares, who was also a member of one of the panels. “I wanted to get a sense of who they were as a human being on a personal basis by faith and other interests.”

The six panels that spoke with the applicants spanned a variety of roles in the SLUH community, ensuring a diverse perspective in the evaluation of each candidate. These panels included the administrative team, administrative staff, faculty members, staff members, parents, and students.

The student panel consisted of Student Body President Patrick Mehan, Student Body Vice President Chandler Flowers, Prep News Editor in Chief Luke Duffy, senior Freddy Laux, juniors Tim Browdy, Charlie Isom-McCall, and Andrew Moffett, and sophomore Patrick McGroarty. This diverse group of representatives from across the student body was responsible for asking the candidates questions that are important to students and completing evaluations that will be taken into account when the final decision is made.

“(The panel) was very diverse, all the people around all aspects of the school from sports to news to everything,” said Isom-McCall. “From black to white to all the races, it was really helpful to get all the insights from every side of the school and especially with the teachers, as well.”

The first candidate interviewed was from within the SLUH community: Fr. Matthew Stewart, SJ. A graduate of SLUH’s class of 1998, Stewart originally worked as the Director of Campus Ministry and a theology teacher for seven years at SLUH before entering the Society of Jesus. Last year, he returned to the SLUH community in his prior positions, but this time as a priest.

“He was very insightful in SLUH,” said Isom-McCall. “He was a graduate from here, and he knew a lot about our tradition, where the school is coming from and where we’re taking the school.”

“He really embodies what SLUH is, and I think he really embodies what we want as a leader,” said Mehan. “Him coming in and getting to see not just the priest side of him but the professional side of him, the side that is a leader and wants to lead the student body was really interesting.”

The panels then interviewed Dr. Dan Gutchewsky, the principal of Clayton High School since January 2013. Prior to being principal, he served as dean of students at Clayton, assistant principal at Wydown Middle School, assistant principal at Clayton and associate principal at Clayton. Gutchewsky earned his doctorate in Educational Leadership at Vanderbilt University. He also won the 2019 Administrator of the Year Award, chosen by the Missouri Journalism Education Association.

“You could tell that he was very familiar with situations in which you'd be asked to be a leader or be asked to make difficult decisions,” said Laux. “What immediately caught my attention about him is that it's very noticeable the amount of experience that he has, because when you're talking with him, he can draw on a lot of that experience in order to talk about how he would answer some of these difficult questions.”

Finally, the panel interviewed Michael LiVigni, the principal of Xavier High School in New York City. After being a part of Xavier’s faculty since 2000, LiVigni is well-acquainted with Jesuit education.

“He really emphasized involvement in the school and wanting to be at sports games and in clubs and events, and he also said he likes to teach a class,” said Mehan. “I think it just showed his desire to connect with students even more, which I thought was cool.”

“He kind of portrayed himself as someone who has that professionality and also that knowledge about Jesuit spirituality. I really liked that he brought with him that professionality role, kind of mixing it with his expertise about the Jesuit philosophy and faith.” said Laux. “And the other thing I personally really liked about LiVigni was that he was very direct in answering our questions. We really appreciated that because it was very easy to understand what type of leader he would be.”

The search committee will meet with President Alan Carruthers next week to present their evaluations of the three candidates, and the final decision will be made by Carruthers before the conclusion of the calendar year.