Sister Patricia Anne Bossle, president of Seton Keough High School, will be leaving the all-girls school on Caton Avenue at the end of June after six years.

Bossle will take with her pride in the improvements made to the school and fond memories of its caring and energetic students.

"She's done a marvelous job; she really has," said Dennis Meehan, the school's principal.

New programs, improved science labs and warmer buildings are not Bossle's most memorable moment at Seton Keough.

That came in spring 2008, when the students held their first annual Walk for Hope.

The event was organized following the discovery in the previous fall that two students at the school had cancer.

Less than a year before that, the school's campus minister, Kathleen Bowen, had died of uterine cancer.

About two years earlier, a campus priest, Rev. Vidastus Bebu, died of colon cancer.

The students organized a walk at the school as part of a day-long fundraiser for the two girls who'd been diagnosed.

"Totally student-organized, and they raised $20,000," Bossle said.

"That's when it all came together -- education and values," she said.

The fundraiser, which was held again in 2009 and 2010, captures Bossle's impression of her school.

"The compassion of the girls is outstanding," said Bossle, who graduated from Seton High School in 1957.

"In this day and age, when you hear about selfish teenagers, I come in here and say 'Where are they?' " she said.

When Bossle arrived six years ago, she found leaky windows and a leaky boiler at the school, which opened as Archbishop Keough in 1965.

"To be sustainable into the future, you can't let your building fall apart," said Bossle, 70.

"We replaced windows that were leaking badly," Bossle said. "We replaced the big, huge boiler with package boilers."

Package boilers are smaller boilers, of which the school now has several. If the school is a little chilly rather than frigid, only one of the small boilers will turn on, rather than wasting the gas necessary to heat a conventional large boiler.

Since the windows and boilers were replaced in summer 2008, "we've seen probably a 20 percent reduction in our usage of gas," Bossle said.

Keeping the school in shape, fiscally as well as its physical condition, is just one of the accomplishments of someone Meehan described as "a very caring administrator."

"She's got a great sense of humor and has a wonderful love for her students," he said. "My only regret is that I didn't have additional time to work with her."

Bossle was initially hired in 2004 as interim president.

"The president hires and oversees the principal and is responsible for oversight of finance, development, facilities and public relations," Bossle said.

"The principal oversees all the day-to-day operations, hires the teaching faculty, directs the entire curriculum program," she said.

After her first year, Bossle received a four-year appointment to remain in the position and, following a one-year extension, her time is now up.

"My appointment actually ran out last June, but the archbishop asked me to remain for one more year," she said.

She will be succeeded by Karen Hanrahan, most recently director of capital campaigns and major gifts at St. Mary Academy-Bay View, a pre-kindergarten through 12th grade Catholic school in Riverside, R.I.

"I think Seton Keough needs someone with new energy and fresh ideas, and I'm looking forward to some time to recoup my own energy," Bossle said.

"This was very much a mutual agreement" with the school's board of directors, Bossle said.

A member of the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, Bossle has been reassigned to the order's headquarters in Emmitsburg, in northern Frederick County, about 10 miles south of Gettysburg.

There, she'll write grants for Mother Seton School, an Emmitsburg Catholic elementary school, as well as Elizabeth Seton High School, a Catholic school in Bladensburg, just north of D.C.

Both of the schools were started, and are owned, by the Daughters of Charity, whose mission is "to try to provide for people who are poor," Bossle said.

"One of my goals is to find financing for these schools to open their doors to students who technically can't afford it," she said.

Bossle has done the same at Seton Keough.

"This has been the best part of my job, to try to seek funds to open our doors to as many girls as possible from any strata," she said.

At Seton Keough, she not only tried to find funds for those who inhabit the classrooms but for the classrooms themselves.

Bossle is also proud of her work to improve the school's science labs.

"We worked really hard and raised $400,000, and were able to create two state of the art science labs," Bossle said. "The labs house our new four-year curriculum in engineering and four-year curriculum for biomedical sciences."

The two curriculums were a team effort between Bossle and Meehan.

"My dream was to create a women-in-science program," Bossle said.

In fact, the students are what Bossle said she'll miss most about the school when she's gone.

"I love to go out in the hallway when they're changing class because I just soak up their energy," she said.

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