After a decade of service dedicated to the students, faculty and staff of Incarnation-St. James School, Ewing, Immaculate Heart of Mary Sister Francis Michael Finsterbusch is set to begin her first year as principal there on an upbeat note.



Sister Francis, who arrived at Incarnation School in 2001 as an administrative assistant and became vice principal in 2003, took an active role in fostering a grassroots campaign to save the 55-year-old institution when closure loomed last year.



Fund raising and creative enrollment strategies have been ongoing since spring and will intensify during the fall semester, said Sister Francis, who has been at the regular Tuesday night meetings to save the school since they began in March.



The committee, she said, has “been coming up with ideas since then, reaching out to the community. We’ve redone our brochures to make them more appealing and we’ve planned a number of events and celebrations including, hopefully, a golf outing.”



The proceeds of the celebrations, as the committee calls them, will go toward operational costs, she said.



“We have hopes of bringing more children to the school and we are focusing on that.



“Our academics are excellent and our technology is excellent. We have updated our computer lab. Every classroom has a Smart board and our teachers are certainly dedicated. Most of them have been with us a long time.”



Sister Francis speaks of her own dedication to Catholic education from a personal standpoint.



Born to Mary and Francis Finsterbusch, she and her three siblings, Joanne, Helen and the late Mary, grew up in Germantown, Pa. The family belonged to Immaculate Conception Parish and she graduated from Cardinal Dougherty High School in 1965, said to be the largest Catholic high school in the nation at the time.



Over the years, she taught in elementary schools in the Philadelphia archdiocese including Holy Innocents School and St. Anthony School, both in Philadelphia, and St. John of the Cross School, Roslyn, where she also served as librarian. Throughout her years at Incarnation- St. James School, her duties have varied according to need, from working as an administrative assistant to vice principal and now principal.



Her resume notes that she has undertaken a wide range of tasks, from ordering text books and stationery to keeping the school records, to enrolling new students and serving as school treasurer.



On a parish level, Sister Francis has served as a lector, extraordinary minister of Holy Communion, a member of the strategic planning committee formed at the time of a diocesan-wide study in 2005-2006, and now, a member of the Steering Committee to Save Our School.



While accomplishing that is the main goal, Sister Frances said her primary goal for the new school year is “to get into the classrooms, and be visible to the teachers and students and be supportive of them and the parents.”