President's Message

Welcome to Villanova Preparatory School!

 I hope this site helps you to know us and to find the information you’re looking for. Our site won’t fully capture what Villanova Preparatory School is about, but it can give you an overview of the tradition, values, programs, and opportunities of the Villanova experience.

The other day I was playing the role of a “marketing man” and putting out a few taglines for Villanova. We don’t have a tagline, but if we did, what might be one of those summation teasers about who we are? Here are a few:

  • A Catholic education with a catholic perspective.
  • Where you’re encouraged to look up!
  • A great value, with great values!
  • Four years of community, and friendships that last a lifetime!
  • Education for the global 21st century – face to face!

O.K., taglines suggest, but don’t tell the whole story. I’ll put it another way:

  • We believe that the high school years are critical ones that challenge and shape a person for a lifetime. They can make all the difference.
  • We believe in study that frees and opens the mind and heart, experiences that strengthen the body and give life to the spirit.
  • We are a community of life that offers friendship and encourages sacrifice for the common good.
  • Our vision includes the goal of happiness in this world and the next.

We’re a small, college preparatory high school, nestled in a park-like campus in the beautiful Ojai Valley. We welcome international students, offering side-by-side learning with local students for a global perspective on life and learning.

Based on St. Augustine’s window on the Good News of Jesus Christ, we share Catholic life. Our overarching values of unity, truth, and love color and shape the Villanova experience.

We welcome your interest in Villanova. If you’d like to learn more, please be in touch for more conversation and a visit.

Sincerely,

(Rev.) John D. Keller, OSA
President

Headmaster's Message

Dear Web Visitors,

At Villanova Prep we recognize the great challenge for any school in these times is to prepare students for 21st century careers and citizenship. Educational journals are stuffed with ideas on how to prepare our students for this new and ever more demanding century and global citizenship. Critical thinking, problem solving, adaptability, initiative, the ability to access and analyze information are all now essential skills.

Yet when I think about it, these skills are not so much 21st century as they are 5th century. Every one of them, as modern sounding as they may be, derive from the Augustinian core values of truth, unity, and love. We read the current journals and we learn from recent research, but we recognize that St. Augustine’s ideals, as ancient as they may be, still provide the most effective foundation for education available.

As you visit our website and become acquainted with our school, you will find that there can’t be a better place than Villanova to build on that foundation to prepare students for success in the 21st century. This is a truly special school, where we look forward even as we reach backward. Unlike most campuses, the students come from a variety of elementary school experiences and backgrounds and even countries. Our international students bring a diversity and richness to the community that few other high schools can possibly provide. We pride ourselves on the diversity of both resident and day students, and the acceptance and respect for others that it encourages.

Our teachers are special as well, each of them committed to excellence in both teaching and learning. They are an extremely interesting bunch, with a range of interests that will challenge not only our students but the administration as well. It is their own participation in the world that allows us to offer such a wide variety of extra-curricular activities, whether it’s in a classroom or on a playing field. No student can fail to be encouraged by the example of our talented faculty.

It is not easy to provide a high school experience, maybe the most important experience of their lives, that sets these students on the journey from adolescent to adult.  But we truly believe that Villanova, with its belief in the past and its faith in the future, is uniquely qualified to change lives and form young men and women into the leading citizens of our complex 21st century world.

Together in the bond of truth, unity and love,

Carol Hoffer

Headmaster