Donna Andrade, Ed.D. Retires After 42 Years Visionary leader defined and institutionalized many aspects of Fairfield Prep’s Jesuit Mission

By Gregory H. Marshall, Class of 1973, Retired Special Assistant to the President, and Robert A. Perrotta, JD, Ed.D., Retired Principal of Fairfield Prep

Many wonderful teachers and administrators have graced the halls of Fairfield College Preparatory School during its eighty years; few have had an impact as profound and as long lasting upon the school that Dr. Donna M. Andrade has had. Among those few, Donna Andrade stands alone in her singular, unique impact, whose effects remain embedded in Fairfield Prep’s very fiber of being. And now, after forty-two years of dedicated service in leading Fairfield Prep in defining and implementing programs that together make the school a ministry of the Society of Jesus, Donna has begun to enjoy life in retirement. Fairfield Prep and the extended Fairfield Prep community rightly acknowledge and celebrate her great work, and thank her for it.

Her career at Prep began inauspiciously enough. After serving as an English teacher at Bridgeport’s Bassick High School for two years, Donna was hired as a full-time teacher of English at Prep for the 1980-1981 school year. She had grown up in Bridgeport’s East End, a child of the vibrant Cape Verdean immigrant community. Four years after graduating from Harding High School, she graduated from the University of Connecticut in the class of 1977.

Two aspects of Donna’s personality have helped guide her decades of success in her education career: her devotion to the Catholic faith and her tenacity in effectuating change in pursuit of the common good. In her early years at Prep as an English teacher, she was known as an excellent classroom teacher, with a knack for motivating her students to derive life lessons from literature. As time went on, she channeled her passion for teaching her students into the cause of educating the adult members of the Prep community in how to realize the directive of Father General, Pedro Arrupe of the Society of Jesus that Jesuit schools ensure that their educational philosophy be based on educating men for others. Based on this global directive, in the United States, The Jesuit Secondary School Association set two major guiding principles for all of its member schools: “Educating to Diversity” and embracing a “Preferential Option For the Poor.”

In 1985, in response to these challenges, Donna Andrade submitted a proposal to the Prep administration for the creation of the first diversity program in a Jesuit school. The purpose of this program was to increase the representation within the Prep student body of groups historically underrepresented (or nonexistent) and to provide support services for both these students and their families in navigating a very challenging and