PERU — Responding to renewed interest in providing opportunities for boarding students, St. Bede Academy here broke ground Monday for an on-campus residence that could house 16 female boarding students for the 2009-2010 school year.

The Benedictine-run Academy was a boys’ boarding school from 1892 until 1981.

“If you speak with alumni who graduated prior to 1981 they all speak of the importance of that mixture of the people they went to school with,” said Father Philip Davey, OSB, moments after he and other St. Bede officials took part in ceremonies at the construction site.

“We think the reinstitution of boarding is an important part of the education experience at St. Bede,” said Father Philip, who heads the boarding program that returned in the beginning of the 2007-2008 school year with a dozen students housed in leased, off-campus residences. The program already has drawn students from as far as California and even China and Thailand.

The success of the past two years led St. Bede to expand the program and bring it on campus.

“We hope that the boarding students will profit by living on campus because they will thus be able to participate more fully in the activities of the academy,” said Abbot Claude Peifer, OSB.

The planned construction will be a 4,000-square- foot addition to an existing home on the St. Bede grounds. A more than century-old farmhouse with a rich history tied to St. Bede is being renovated to serve as an apartment for the resident managers.

The house originally served to house a family that took care of the Abbey’s cow herd. The monastic community produced its own milk until the 1970s. More recently, it was the base of Benedictine Sisters who served the religious education needs of area parishes.

The new girls’ boarding home will occupy additions to that building that will feature four bedrooms and two baths in each of two semi-private pod-style suites.

Construction of a similar dormitory for boarding boys on campus — the school currently utilizes the former St. Hyacinth’s Rectory in LaSalle for that purpose — is planned for the near future to increase the total boarding population from the present 12 to 30.