President of Regis Jesuit High School Creates Space for Relational and Transformational Education
By Rachel Amiri
Forming students who are equipped to navigate the world in which we live today takes both vision and effort. Regis Jesuit High School’s vision of education that meets today’s challenges is rooted in the Jesuit principle of cura personalis, care for each student as an individual. The effort is led by David Card, who has served as the first lay president of the Denver school since 2016.
“What we do here at Regis Jesuit is we create space,” Card said. “The formation activities that we do, whether it’s academic or service or pastoral, really create a space for our students to be vulnerable in ways that allow them to love themselves and therefore love others.”
Card brings to his work a lifelong and deeply rooted commitment to Catholic and Jesuit education. A graduate of Regis Jesuit, Card taught at the school from 1999 to 2003 and served as development director before becoming the first president of Escuela de Guadalupe, a Nativity model elementary school in Denver.
He returned to his alma mater in 2016, because he saw an opportunity to steward an institution that can positively impact the world well into the future.
“I was just so convinced that graduates of Regis Jesuit are going to be the people who are difference-makers in the world,” he said.
Regis Jesuit utilizes an innovative model of separate boys’ and girls’ divisions in the same academic institution. This promotes students’ human and spiritual development, rooting them in a diverse community of young men and women while offering the freedom and documented benefits of single-sex education in most academic classes and on selected retreats. Card sees this as a significant way Regis Jesuit “creates space” for students to grow.
“It leads to lifelong friendships that have real spiritual depth,” he says.
Over almost a decade of his leadership, the school has remained rooted in its Jesuit identity while emphasizing access, innovation and mission. Key to the school’s “Inspire and Ignite 2025” strategic plan, Card said, was extending the opportunity for a Regis Jesuit education to more students in the Denver area through financial aid and scholarships.
“We expanded financial aid, ensuring that Regis Jesuit is not exclusive,” he said. “We’ve never served more students than we are today with financial aid, creating that access to a Jesuit education.”
With a student population of around 1,700 across both divisions, the school also expanded and revitalized its campus in Aurora, Colorado, opening a new Science and Innovation Center in 2024 that enhanced hands-on STEM learning opportunities, and recently grew its athletics facilities.
The son of a long-time faculty member and the father of current RJHS students, Card continues a family tradition as he works to sustain a Denver institution that produces graduates who are “Men and Women with and for Others.”
“We’re equally focused on the word with,” Card said. “It’s about solidarity, about really understanding the experiences of people on the margins.”
Regis Jesuit has a robust immersion program, with 80% of seniors participating in immersion experiences in Denver and beyond. Students step outside the classroom – and often travel far from home – to experience new cultures and languages and often to engage in service. A component of prayer and reflection on God’s movements during the immersion is key to the experience.
“I think by inviting our students to be in relationship with God, they have a deeper willingness, awareness and opportunity to understand how their relationship with others in the world, and particularly those on the margins, is how they really express that relationship,” Card said.
As student participation has increased, Card said, they have observed the “deep and lasting impact” of the experiences on students.
Card is confident that a Regis Jesuit education fosters a relationship with God that deepens students’ awareness of their responsibilities toward others, motivating them to serve the greater glory of God. And he is hopeful that these experiences of vulnerability and connection will serve graduates and the broader world long into the future.
“I think it is that leadership development of both mind and heart that our students and our graduates carry into the world that really creates transformational implications,” he said.
Photos courtesy of Regis Jesuit High School.
