Leadership at SMSA
Professor Slater
SMSA is excited to announce that Professor Marion Slater will be our School Director at SMSA for the 2022 - 2023 school year!
Professor Slater has been a member of the SMSA Leadership Team since its inception in June 2022 and brings a wealth of teaching and educational leadership experience.
Professor Slater will have the same authority as a principal, which means she is the operational Head-of-School and reports to Father Scott and secondarily to Dr. Virgilio, the Superintendent of Schools.
SMSA is excited to have Professor Slater help us achieve our goal of providing the students with ingredients for success: Powerful Minds, Prayerful Hearts, and Helping Hands.
Fr. Scott VanDerveer
Fr. Scott VanDerveer, a passionate educator and life-long learner, is the pastor and leader of St. Mary’s Parish and SMSA. Fr. Scott was born and raised in Rochester, received a degree in Journalism & Mass Communication from St. Bonaventure University and went on to earn a Master’s in Education at Boston College.
After spending time abroad serving in Up with People program, he took a position as a high school theology teacher for five years at Cristo Rey Catholic High School in Boston. In 2007, he took a middle school teaching position near his maternal relatives in Albany, while he took a closer look at what it would mean to follow the pull he had felt for so long toward religious life.
In 2009, Father Scott returned to Boston to study at Pope St. John XXIII National Seminary as a seminarian of the Diocese of Albany. He earned a Masters of Divinity degree and was ordained as a priest on June 8, 2013 at age 38.
His first assignment was at St. Mary’s Parish in Oneonta then went on to become pastor of two parishes: St. Mary’s in Coxsackie, and the Church of St. Patrick in Ravena. In September 2021, he became the pastor of St. Mary’s Parish and SMSA.