Our Leadership

Academic Year 2025-2026

Dear Friends of Georgetown Prep,

This academic year, we celebrate the 237th year since Archbishop John Carroll opened the doors of his Academy. It is always heartening to see our young men fill the walks of the quad and hallways. I am reminded once again how blessed and honored I am to be entrusted with the care of this, our nation’s oldest Catholic boys school and only Jesuit boarding school. As we celebrate the Jubilee of Hope of 2025 announced by the late Pope Francis, I am reminded yet again of the great hope the work we do here represents: forming young men to be men of competence, conscience, courage, and compassion; men of faith and men for-and-with others in a world that badly needs such people. This hope is renewed with the return of our students, as well as the arrival of some 120 fresh young faces. Prep is a great way to celebrate hope.

The commitment of our faculty and staff to be present to all our students, not only in the classroom but also across the broad spectrum of our activities and athletics programs, coupled with the uniquely rich diversity of our student body from our day and boarding programs, shapes an unparalleled educational experience both within the Jesuit educational network and among our peer schools. 

It is always a joy to witness our freshmen, this year the Class of 2029, encounter the culture of Georgetown Prep and begin to experience the camaraderie, brotherhood, and mutual support that are the hallmarks of this community. I often recall that Ignatius and his six early companions came from all over Southwestern Europe and, in a world marked by war and strife, formed a brotherhood of friendship that became the Society of Jesus. We fulfill that mission again, with our current students coming from every background, and from some 20 states and 20 countries, as well as from all over the DMV.

One of the defining marks of all Jesuit apostolic works per the 35th and 36th General Congregations of the Society of Jesus is collaboration, and we at Prep embrace this call with gusto.  Working with each other as faculty and staff, but also working with our families and the young men they entrust to us is clearly an effective way to form young minds and hearts. But more importantly, it is also a tremendous witness in our polarized world to the way God works with and through ordinary men and women in the ongoing creation, sustenance, and redemption of our world, gathering to Himself peoples of every race, creed, language, and way of life. This vision, found at the very core of the Spiritual Exercises, is so profoundly different from what our world offers us, and it is our joy to lay it before our students and their families.

The 22nd Annotation of the Spiritual Exercises states: “…it should be presupposed that every good Christian ought to be more eager to put a good interpretation on a neighbor’s statement than to condemn it. Further, if one cannot interpret it favorably, one should ask how the other means it. If that meaning is wrong, one should correct the person with love; and if this is not enough, one should search out every appropriate means through which, by understanding the statement in a good way, it may be saved.”  Ignatius wrote these words in a time people flung anathemas and worse at each other with reckless abandon. Our time sadly is not too much different. But we can be different; we can be the salt and the light that Jesus asks us to be (Matthew 5:13-16).  This is the joyful, hope-filled labor we are about at Prep – offering our students a fresh vision, one where they can make a difference.

God bless!  Sincerely in Christ,

Rev. James R. Van Dyke, S.J. 
President