Mentor program to aid new Gila Vista principal
Before being hired as the incoming principal at Gila Vista Junior High School, Thad Dugan was also selected as one of 26 educators in Arizona to participate in the 2015 Rodel Aspiring Principal program.
Dugan, who most recently worked as an assistant principal at Pistor Middle School in the Tucson Unified School District, explained that he plans to take advantage of the mentorship program to help enhance his leadership skills as a new principal in the Yuma area.
An initiative of the Rodel Foundation of Arizona, the program allows for participants to undergo two years of training and shadowing with various mentors across the state. Dugan will specifically have an opportunity to be mentored by Rodel Exemplary Principal Connie Jerpseth, a principal at Mesquite Elementary School who has served as a leader in the Crane Elementary School District for the past 13 years.
“Success in any field is greatly improved when you have outstanding mentors,” said Jackie Norton, Rodel president and CEO. “We know that these aspiring principals have the talent to excel, and with the support of their exemplary principal mentors, they will be able to succeed as school leaders in Arizona communities that are in need of great leadership.”
In order to be a part of the program, Dugan was required to undergo an extensive application and interview process after also being nominated.
Locally, funding partners for the program include the Yuma County School Superintendent and the Yuma Community Foundation.
Dugan said that he was honored to be chosen to participate in the program and is excited to see how it will develop him as a leader.
Although he will already be serving as a principal, he said that it will be helpful to gain insight and feedback from an experienced leader who already has knowledge of the local area.
“The context in Tucson is different than the context in Yuma,” he said.
“Knowing what the values of the community are and any opportunity that you get to work with people from a variety of different schools across the state opens up the possibility of finding something that’s very unique or works and could possibly work for the students at your school or the community.”
He noted that other benefits of the program include being able to network with educators in Arizona to see what they are doing that works in their schools and how those strategies could possibly be implemented at his own school. The culminating project of the Rodel Aspring Principal program will be to write a white paper, which is a short research paper on a specific issue. With a PhD in Education Leadership and Policy from the University of Arizona, he noted that research allows time to delve deeper into topics of interest.
“Anytime you get involved in researching a topic or engaging in those kinds of things, that allows you to really pick something that’s applicable to the situation you’re working in or something that would benefit the community or the school in general.”
Dugan said that his goals for the upcoming year in his position at Gila Vista are to improve the school’s “C” letter grade while also maintaining the school’s focus on college preparedness as an Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) school.
He noted that he’s also looking forward to Yuma Elementary School District 1’s implementation of its personalized learning initiative.
“I’m amazed at how awesome Yuma is, as far as how advanced they are compared with other places in the direction they are going.”
An assistant principal at Pistor Middle School for the past three years, Dugan has almost 20 years of experience in a wide range of education fields – spanning from preschool to graduate school. After working in autism therapy and teaching in San Diego for five years, he moved to Arizona to oversee an alternative education program within the Tucson Unified School District. He later became the assistant principal at Mansfeld School before taking a job at the University of Arizona as a graduate research associate as part of an Improving Teaching Quality Grant. There he worked to build capacity with administration and personnel across the state to turn around low-performing schools across the state.