High School Named for Blessed Fulton Sheen Readies for Opening
The school will be located in Boyce, Virginia, located about 16 miles north of Christendom College in Front Royal, Virginia.
Among those who traveled to the beatification Mass for Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen in St. Louis on Thursday were a group of educators preparing to launch what they say will be the first Catholic school in the U.S. named for the famed writer, preacher and televangelist.
The Dawson Sheen Academy, a coeducational high school for grades nine through 12 taking shape in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, also honors the late English historian Christopher Dawson, a prominent Catholic convert and Harvard professor known for his writing on Christianity’s foundational role in shaping Western culture.
Ahead of the school’s formal opening for the first freshman class of 40 students in the fall of 2027, organizers are offering introductory classes on Saturdays beginning Sept. 26. Those sessions, held in a parish hall in Berryville, Virginia, will highlight the school’s unique hybrid educational approach combining a classical curriculum with vocation-focused preparatory courses. The school will be located in Boyce, Virginia, located about 16 miles north of Christendom College in Front Royal, Virginia.
After focusing on the humanities in their first two years, students will choose an academic pathway aligned with their professional interests. Alongside their other academics, they will select one of three tracks to pursue: “Arts and Sciences,” “Business and Technology” and “Trades and Professions.”
“We’re trying to transform the culture from within,” said Charles Presberg, a Harvard-educated tenured professor at the University of Missouri who is one of the school’s co-founders.
“I found that great 20th-century historian Christopher Dawson as well as Fulton Sheen are the perfect cultural and living emblems of exactly what we want to produce for children — a blend of Catholic classical and professional schooling,” he said.
“We wanted to give our students the life skills that they desire and, at the same time, really ground them very well in their civilization.”
Wanting students to radically excel in their studies, Presberg and other administrators spent years developing and refining their academy’s curriculum before announcing the forthcoming opening.
Focusing on the needs of each student, the faculty will prepare for every student’s success — physically, intellectually, morally and spiritually. While the school is coed, boys and girls will be taught separately.
For the first two years at Dawson Sheen Academy, students will be required to complete structured courses that act as the foundation for higher learning. Students will learn the importance of humanities, religion, history, foreign languages, literature, physical education, math and sciences — combining classical education with professional schooling.
In the upper grades, students will also gain valuable experience through internships and will have the opportunity to earn college credits.
“I know the university system well … and I know what the university system requires, so the students will be very prepared for that, or they can go directly into the profession — if that’s what they want,” Presberg told the Register.
He explained, “We want to make these students very good contributors to their societies, to their communities, and to their families, to their churches, and the rest. That’s always been my passion.”