BC High Announces St. Ignatius Award Recipients
Principal Stephen Hughes ’73 will receive BC High’s highest honor for alumni, the St. Ignatius Award, recognizing his more than forty years of service to the school. President Grace Cotter Regan said, “The culture of our beloved school is fostered and nurtured by dedicated servants like Steve, who live their faith and pursue a more fair and just world by impressing upon our students the values of the Jesuit tradition and the education of the whole person.”
The Thomas and Mary Shields Medal is presented to an individual who is not a graduate of BC High but is recognized for his or her service, dedication, and generosity to the school. The 2019 Shields Medal recipient is Margaret Florentine, who recently retired as Provincial Assistant for Pre-Secondary and Secondary Educationof the Northeast Province of Jesuits. Florentine served in this rolefor nearly 20 years. She is also a retired member of the BC High faculty, and a former trustee.
The awards ceremony this year will feature a special honor, the first-ever conferral of an award recognizing the global vision of William Kemeza, President of Boston College High School from 2004-2017. His leadership led to the creation of the first ever International Colloquium of Jesuit Secondary Education, as well as the establishment of the Hyde Center for Global Education at BC High; both monumental accomplishments that will change the trajectory of Jesuit education for decades to come.
The inaugural recipient of the William Kemeza Global Leadership Award is Martin Joseph Dunn, DMD ’53. Dr. Dunn is a retired oral & maxillofacial surgeon, Boston College High School Trustee, and Co-Founder of the Jesuit Global Colloquium.He is also co-founder and past-president of Por Christo, a charitable medical service organization that organized and supervised 60 voluntary medical missions to South America and republics of the former Soviet Union to provide lifesaving dental care and facial surgery from 1979 to 1994. He was knighted by the President of Ecuador and Pope John Paul II. He has been awarded four honorary doctorate degrees.