St. John's College (abbreviated as SJC, and locally known as St. John's or John's) is a private Catholic selective secondary school for boys and private co-educational university college, located in Belize City, Belize. Founded in 1887 by the Society of Jesus as St. John Berchmans' College, a high school for boys only, it has since grown and now offers a wide variety of liberal arts and science courses at the secondary, British A-level, and United States junior college levels.
For management purposes, St. John's is organised into three divisions: St. John's College High School, Belize (oldest, established 1887) St. John's College Extension (established 1957) St. John's College Junior College (established 1964)
Key centres and institutes within the university college are the Belize Centre for Art Education and Cultural Understanding, the Institute for Workforce and Economic Development, the Belizean Studies Research Centre, and the Counseling Centre.
History
St. John's College was founded in 1887 with the establishment of the “Select School” for young men at the Catholic presbytery, Holy Redeemer Cathedral in Belize City. The founder of St. John's College was Fr. Cassian Gillett, S.J., one of four British Jesuit priests, who arrived in Belize in the 1880s. The school opened with 12 day-students and two boarders. According to the 1897 prospectus, the school's mission was “to afford the youth of the Colony, and the neighboring Republics, the means of obtaining a solid mental and moral training.” It added that Belize needed “a school of Higher Studies so that our youth would not have to go abroad for preparation for university work.”
The school grew quickly. In February 1896, it moved into a newly constructed building on the cathedral grounds. Its name changed from the Select School to St. John's College, under Fr. William J. Wallace. The enrollment continued to expand and included boarding students from neighboring Central American republics such as Guatemala and Honduras. This steady expansion forced a second move, to seafront land supplied by the government to the south of town. On July 17, 1917, the faculty and students moved into spacious wooden buildings with wide verandahs and windows open to the sea breeze. The campus was called Loyola Park.
More construction followed including a gymnasium and chapel. By 1929 there were 90 students at the college.
August 1921 saw an outbreak of yellow fever at Loyola Park. Day students returned to their homes for hospitalization. Boarding students were first taken to a small island just off the coast, Moho Caye. From there boarders from the rural areas of Belize, Yucatán, and Guatemala returned home but those from Honduras were refused admittance in their country. They were quarantined at Sargent's Caye. Two students and two faculty members died before the fever passed.
On September 11, 1931 one of the worst hurricanes to hit Belize took 2,500 lives including 11 Jesuits at Loyola Park, where the buildings were leveled and splintered. SJC returned to the cathedral grounds where it remained until 1952, when it moved to its spacious new Landivar campus northwest of town.
The new campus is named after the Central American poet and renowned scholar Rafael Landivar, S.J. Its 21 buildings include Fordyce Chapel, a large fieldhouse and auditorium that accommodates many diocesan events, and 17 classroom buildings—including two designed and built by the American Schools and Hospitals Abroad program. The spacious campus includes two football fields and is adjacent to National Stadium, built in the 1960s, which hosts international events and has grown into the Marion Jones Sports Complex.
St. John's College pioneered adult evening education with the inauguration of its Extension School, in September 1947. The press release for its opening described its purpose: "One of the most valuable educational techniques of our day, co-operative search for truth, gives adult learners an opportunity to meet together, face a problem in common, think it through as a group, and solve it if possible." Initial courses were “The Art of Thinking”, “Effective Speaking and Parliamentary Practice”, “Capital and Labor”, and “Business Ethics”. The first class of 55 men and 27 women began a program aimed at providing leadership training for people who had finished high school and wanted post-secondary education that was unavailable in Belize at the time. The roster of students in those early days included the names of men who went on to lead Belize's independence movement.