Brendan Conroy, President, Mount Carmel High School

To begin with, could you please give us a brief overview of the institution as it stands today? I understand you have a long history—you started in 1900—so quite incredible. Could you please give us an introduction to Mount Carmel?

Yes. Mount Carmel is a Catholic high school for grades 9 to 12 founded in 1900 for young men only. It is run or owned by the Carmelite fathers and brothers. Mount Carmel has traditionally welcomed immigrants and the working class, with a mix of professional classes as well, and has grown in its diversity economically, religiously, geographically, racially, and ethnically over its long history.

It’s a college preparatory school. All of our students are prepared to go to college, and the vast majority of them, about 95 percent, choose to go to a college of their choice, and the other 5 percent choose to either go to work or list in the military in most cases. 

So, you know, we have steadfastly remained an all-boys school because we believe that it is an important place for young men to grow toward manhood as it is a safe, nurturing environment that also challenges them.

Understood. And what would you say have been the keys to the success of Mount Carmel, especially in the last decade?

I would say Mount Carmel’s keys to success are that we are strong in our foundation. We are unapologetically a Catholic school, even though about 65 to 70 percent of our students only identify as Catholic. So, those values that drive Mount Carmel and always have driven Mount Carmel are still in place, but at the same time, despite having a lot of pretty amazing traditions, we’re dynamic. We’re growing our campus into something bigger and better than it has ever been. We have more offerings than we’ve ever been able to offer. We continue to evolve, grow, change, and become better at serving the young men whose families want more for their sons here in the city of Chicago.

I would also say that in the last decade, our location here in Chicago has evolved into a really great asset. People are starting to realize how close we are to not only the south side, where we’re located, about a mile south of the University of Chicago and just a few blocks from the Obama Presidential Center that’s going up, but we’re close to downtown and the north side as well. So, we’re easily accessible. Our campus, which sometimes I think in the past people felt was isolating, truly is a destination in some ways now in the city of Chicago, and it’s becoming more and more that.

Understood. And I would like to discuss with you a little bit about the offerings, the different programs. So you have a focus on business and as well on STEM. You also have the honors, advanced placement, children with disabilities, and the McDermott-Doyle Program. So, could you perhaps elaborate a little bit more on the different programs and their qualities?

Sure. We try to meet the individual needs of our young men who come to Mount Carmel. So, some of the young men who come to us may be talented in one area, let’s say, English or language, and might not be as talented in, say, math or something else, or vice versa.

And so we mix and match so that our students can get what they need in each of those academic areas and the levels at which we will place them are pretty permeable. I would say they are able to move up or down according to their need from year to year. So, a student might start off in an honors or advanced placement level if he maintains the performance and the grades. He can stay in that honors or advanced placement level in that subject area. But if it’s too much of a struggle, and if it’s apparent that it’s better for him to go to what we call a college prep level, which is, you know, a slight level lower than honors, or you know, not quite the honors level, where there’s a little more time taken, then we can do that as well.

We are able to serve students who have learning differences, who have IEPs, Individual Educational Plans, or 504 plans. But they have to be able to navigate. They are not in a stand-alone, isolated program. They are taking the coursework that we require of all of our students to graduate and be ready for college acceptance and success.

So, the Mcdermott-Doyle Program, which serves about a hundred students in general, is a program meant to supplement and assist those students as necessary, who have those plans, who have that need, and who are mainstreamed right into the regular, then full, culture of the school.

One thing I didn’t say earlier that I would like to say now if you don’t mind, is that one of the defining characteristics that have really helped Mount Carmel stay strong is the identification that our young men have with each other. They start off as acquaintances. Then, they become classmates and teammates. Then, they become friends. And by the time they graduate—and we just had our graduation last night—they’re brothers. They really do see each other as a lifelong brotherhood.

Maybe that’s why some of them join the military as well.

Yeah, that could be. But I think that’s why so many of them end up working together when they graduate from college, or they stand up at each other’s weddings, or they are there when a family member is sick, or when you know when their baby is going to get baptized, or things like that. So it’s a pretty powerful thing, the tight, close relationships and the bonds that these guys form over the time that they’re here as students.

Understood. Athletics is also part of that formation period. Sports are obviously a really important pillar. Could you tell us a little bit more about athletics, basketball, and so on?

Absolutely. We have a very strong athletic program which is really part of a long tradition of strong athletics. If you know high school boys, one way to get to most of them is through the activities that they’re interested in, and often that’s athletics. And so, we have 27 state championships. At this point, we have 15 state championships in football, several in wrestling and hockey, one in basketball, one in water polo, baseball, and all kinds of opportunities for a young man who wants to pursue his athletic dreams in high school and be led by great coaches and also be held accountable for the school work that he’s got to do. 

So, here at Mount Carmel, we value the student-athlete very highly. Not just the athlete, but athletics is often a hook to get them in the door. We call it the front porch of the schools sometimes. But then, once they’re here, they get educated and prepared for college, and we also try to inculcate them with the morals and values that we want them to grow toward manhood with.

And what would you say is the main competitive strength of Mount Carmel compared to other college prep institutions?

I would say it’s a couple of things, Victor. One is this. It’s kind of encapsulated, and I’ll break it out a little bit with a motto that hangs in our building and that every Mount Carmel student and graduate knows. And it goes like this: “You came to Mount Carmel as a boy. If you care to struggle and work at it, you will leave as a man.” What we mean by that is you have to care enough about your own future to put in the effort, to put in the work, to do the things that are necessary, to listen to the people who are wiser than you to become part of the community and give back to the community to make it better.

We’re helping our students, our potential students, see that you can be different if you dare. If you dare to challenge yourself to the level that we’re going to challenge you, if you dare to pass by schools that might be easier for you to get to, and you decide to come to Mount Carmel, there’s a payoff. There is a return on your investment of time and on your parents’ investment of time and resources, financial and otherwise, that’s going to be phenomenal. But you have to buy in. And we realize it’s not for everybody. But for those who come, and those who understand what it means to care, struggle, work at it, learn what that means, and are willing to kind of give over to that, the transformation is really incredible and energizing to witness.

And is there anything that I haven’t asked you about that you would like to mention?

Yeah. Last night, I was standing outside the cathedral where our class of 2024 graduated from. After the graduation, the older brother of one of our graduates, who is going into his senior year of college, is studying biology, and is planning to go to Med school. I got into a conversation with him and asked him how he was doing. And he said this summer, he’s going to be presenting his research to the National Institutes of Health. Not dissimilarly, another student is at Boston College. Now he’s a monk. He’s a Carmel graduate. Another graduate that we connected with recently was giving the commencement address at Harvard, and he’s a Mount Carmel graduate.

We’re all about taking the lead as a man, and we don’t mean that as a macho kind of thing, but really becoming the man that you want to be, obviously respecting women, but also becoming a leader as an employee or as a boss, or as a community member, or a member of your church, whatever. You’re a part of taking a lead. 

I think of those examples and so many more that we are so proud of, and they often come back to us and tell us it’s what happened at Mount Carmel that prepared me for this. They feel they could not have gotten to where they are without that Mount Carmel experience of being shown the way by the men and women who work here and by the sacrifices their parents have made to have them attend here.

Brendan, one of my last questions will be, what is the key message that you would like to send?

The key message that I’d like to send across is that Mount Carmel is an important place for the city of Chicago. Mount Carmel is a place where young men come together from wildly different backgrounds and are challenged morally, academically, socially, spiritually, and religiously to grow. And what happens over the course of their four years here is so important because what we’re doing is producing young men who are ready to lead, who are ready to make Chicago, or wherever they end up, a better place to be, a better place to live, and to make their families even better. So we’re really important to Chicago, I think because we also offer these young men, some of whom don’t have much means, an opportunity to raise up their generation of their families beyond what maybe they thought was possible for them.

What is the vision that you have for Mount Carmel in the next 3 to 5 years?

Our vision for Mount Carmel in the next 3 to 5 years is to continue on our upward trajectory of enrollment growth, continue on solid financial footing, and grow Mount Carmel in terms of opportunities for young men who need a well-rounded education! That’s college preparatory grounded in values.