Volunteers attend a session on how to ask for donations.
Kate Trauth, associate professor in the department of civil and environmental engineering at MU, is convinced that had it not been for her time at a Catholic high school, she would not be an engineer.
“I had a high school guidance counselor who knew me well and told me to consider engineering,” Trauth said. “And now here I am today, an associate professor. It was a very dramatic event in my life.”
Her positive experience with Catholic secondary education is the reason she is helping lead a $10 million capital campaign to bring a Catholic high school to Columbia. Trauth shares her enthusiasm for Catholic secondary education with other campaign leaders, who have begun to raise funds for the campaign, which includes attending solicitation training sessions.
The Steier Group, a nonprofit developing office, is conducting the training sessions. Attendance at one session, which lasts about an hour, is required for all volunteers obtaining pledges from community members and businesses. The sessions, which began Jan. 30, teach volunteers how to ask people for money.
“The volunteers are required to go, and they generally want to because they want to know how to approach people,” said Monsignor Michael Flanagan, pastor of Our Lady of Lourdes Parish. “It’s a lot of money to try and get from people.”
Trauth said the opportunity for a school that will bring Catholic faith and other subjects together motivates many of the volunteers.
“I think why people are committed to this is because of the type of school it will be,” Trauth said. “It’s a high school that is integrated: Academics and everything else that you have will be combined with the faith aspect.”
Leaders of the campaign hope to raise the $10 million in pledges from community members and businesses by May. The “Grateful Memories ... Faithful Future” diocesan-wide capital campaign for the diocese of Jefferson City will give a maximum of $1.5 million seed money to the new high school.
The high school will be in southeast Columbia on the north side of Gans Road. Groundbreaking is projected for spring 2008.
Bob Schmersahl, development consultant for the project, said that since the campaign is still in the early stages, numbers on the amount raised are not yet available but that the fundraising efforts are “on track.”
Trauth said she is confident the campaign will raise the money, based on two studies conducted by the Columbia InterParish Study Committee in the past few years on community support and financial feasibility of opening a Catholic high school.
“We asked people if they would be willing to offer a gift to the campaign, and the numbers that came back showed support,” Trauth said. “They added up, and we should be able to be on track.”
One of the studies released by the InterParish Study Committee in fall 2004 surveyed Catholics in Columbia: 73 percent of survey respondents indicated they would send their child to a Catholic high school if one were to open in Columbia.
Rob Quinn, a parish section chairman for Sacred Heart Catholic Church, said a big focus of the campaign right now is to recruit volunteers from the Catholic community to help obtain pledges. “Right now there’s quite a bit of time going to (recruiting),” Quinn said.
“The big drive (for me) is the thought of a Catholic high school in Columbia,” he said. “My grandfather still talks about how he helped start Helias High School (in Jefferson City) and how rewarding that was to him.”
Schmersahl said that more than 100 people had completed the solicitation training through Monday.
“We have hundreds of volunteers already,” said James Stella, who, like Trauth, is helping lead the campaign. “There are over 3,400 Catholic families in Columbia that we need to contact. At the present time, we are just working hard to bring pledges in.”
Missourian reporter Kimberly Pribisko contributed to this report.