Morristown All-Girls High Academy—Oldest of its Kind in State—Remains a Beacon of Excellence

One-hundred-sixty-three years ago, the Sisters of Charity, a Roman Catholic congregation founded in Newark by Mother Xavier Mehegan, was commissioned by Bishop James Roosevelt Bayley to establish a school for young women in the state of New Jersey. Such a school would have been the first ever secondary school for young women in the state’s history. Formally established in Madison in 1860, the motherhouse of the school was then moved onto a parcel of land that, in a series of municipal adjustments over the next several decades, fell within the boundaries of what is today Morristown. The College of Saint Elizabeth—renamed Saint Elizabeth University in 2020—was founded in 1899 as a part of this greater complex. It is the oldest women’s college in the state and one of the first ever Catholic colleges in the United States to award degrees to women. Today, it is a state beacon of academic excellence and, under Principal Lynn Burek’s stewardship, looks to remain so.

  “I’m always in awe and humbled by the history of the school,” says Burek, “as well as the amazing women who form the base of our alumnae. I’m extremely proud to be in a position to continue that legacy and to build on it. We certainly nurture the past here as we prepare these girls for the future.”

Burek was the first lay person to ever become principal of the Academy when she did so in 2015. Prior to that, she spent her entire professional life in the public school system as a teacher. The past seven years, she says, have been incredible for her, not only professionally in stewarding such a historic institution from its peak administrative position, but at a deeper, more personally level as well.

 “Every day here I have a chance to forge relationships with incredible people, whether administrative staff, teachers, parents, the Sisters of Charity, the trustees, and of course the students themselves,” she says. “ A typical workday for Burek includes morning announcements to the student body, where she always makes it a point to offer some inspiration for the day ahead. She then conducts meetings with the administrative team and teachers, and sometimes follows those meetings with several class observations, being present in the hallways and lunch periods, interacting with students, all the while maintaining communication with the Sisters of Charity, the trustees, and the parents. 

“Working with the girls has to be my favorite overall part of the job,” says Burek. “It’s inspiring for me to be able to offer inspiration to them every day, to push them to live out the mission that the Sisters of Charity brought forth into the founding of the school so many years ago.”  The five core values of that mission are charity, community, justice, service, and educational excellence. 

Overall, says Burek, being able to see the transformation of these women during this critical four-year span of their early lives is perhaps the single most rewarding part of her job for her, as well as to have the chance to play a role in it all. 

The school’s campus today covers over 200 acres of land, including the university. Convent Station—a fully functional train station, is but a three-minute walk from the school’s doors, and many of St. Elizabeth students and staff members make use of it to commute to and from their homes. The Sisters of Charity themselves live on grounds adjacent to the school buildings. They participate in activities with the students frequently and form a vital part of the campus’s daily dynamic. Primary among the sister’s roles is their serving as walking reminders of the institution’s illustrious past, and of the values for which staff and students should always be reaching almost two centuries after the school’s founding. 

Over the course of an academic year, St. Elizabeth students organize and conduct several activities, each of which in its own way seeks to bring its community closer together in common cause. There is, for example, Spirit Week, which coincides with the beginning of school athletics and is meant to bolster support for the school’s sports teams. 

There is the Mother-Daughter Tea, which is a chance for mothers and daughters to dress up, as they would for high tea at the Ritz, and spend some time together. The Calendar Party, another activity, is a class competition in which the students are assigned a particular season of the year on which to base competing performative skits, and partake in meals, decorating, and camaraderie. There is also the Christmas Lighting Ceremony, in which the students sing carols, decorate the school, and have a great, festive assembly. All this is to say nothing of the school’s reputation for academic excellence, which has been—and looks to always will be—at the heart of every other initiative. 

In an ever-changing world, it is refreshing to be able to see institutions as long-standing and successful as this one continue to uphold the very principles on which it built its sturdy reputation so many years ago. May the Academy of St. Elizabeth thrive on.