Crespi News

Crespi Carmelite High School, Encino, CA

“The science behind the strategies and techniques that Dr. Michael Gurian has studied over the past 30+ of years has been interwoven into the Crespi experience.  A Crespi Man is a lifelong learner, and the Gurian Institute Center for Educational Excellence allows all faculty, staff, and administration to engage in the practice of creating and sharing knowledge about the value of developmental neuroscience in how we educate and learn. Our collaboration with Dr. Gurian and ongoing professional development enables us to stay at the cutting edge of single-gender, all-boy education.”
–Dr. Kenneth Foersch, President, Crespi Carmelite High School

In 2022, the newest Gurian Institute (GI) Regional Center for Excellence was born at Crespi Carmelite High School (Crespi) in Encino, California.  Serving the whole Los Angeles area, as well as students from overseas, Crespi embodies generations of educational excellence.  It became the Gurian Institute’s first Model School in 2005.  It is now a Gurian Institute Center for Excellence!

About the ongoing Gurian Institute and Crespi partnership from which the new Center emerged, Rob Kodama says, “We have embraced the Gurian Institute and it has enhanced our school in numerous ways.  As the Director of Admissions, Marketing, and Public Relations, I can report that The Gurian Institute team has helped us rise above our competing schools. We have come to the forefront of educating boys in the Los Angeles area."

This collaboration, over the last seventeen years, led to the development of The Center at Crespi Carmelite, whose mission statement is: “To build men of character and faith unified in brotherhood and formed through a contemporary, Catholic, college preparatory education in the Carmelite tradition of prayer, community, and service.”

The school’s vision statement echoes this approach: “To be a dynamic learning community where tradition and innovation prepare Crespi Men for success in all facets of life.”

Crespi provides a much-needed rite-of-passage, over a four-year period, in which boys move forward to becoming empathic, discerning, and successful men.

“If you believe boys and girls are wired differently,” Crespi’s admissions statement reads, “then Crespi is for you.”  Crespi takes this very seriously, and this is where the Gurian Institute has been helpful.  Layering its own Catholic vision of male development with our science-based approach, Crespi provides academic rigor, athletic accomplishment, social-emotional growth, and personal development for each boy in its care.

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