A Message from Erika F. Randall, Chair of Board of Trustees

Dear Mayfield Senior School Community,

 

After a highly successful tenure, Kate Morin informed the Board of Trustees that she will retire in June 2023, at the end of her eighth year at Mayfield Senior School. We received this news with immense gratitude and respect for all Kate has accomplished as Head of School. Her leadership has been remarkable and truly a reflection of our Holy Child goals. We will miss her tremendously, but Kate will always be a part of our Mayfield community.

 

Thanks to Kate’s leadership and her unwavering commitment to our Holy Child and Catholic mission, Mayfield Senior School is thriving. During her tenure, with Cornelia Connelly’s vision as the source of her inspiration, Kate strengthened our faith formation, campus ministry and service programs, bringing our Catholic identity to life in the community. Always student-centered, she pioneered the holistic Formation of Self (FOS) curriculum and cultivated more offerings in the STEM curriculum and the Art Conservatories. She thoughtfully expanded summer study options to allow more advanced course loads during the school year. She creatively altered the sequence of the sciences to offer Freshmen Physics, seeding an early sense of confidence and curiosity in STEM. She championed Justice, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (JDEI) in school culture, equipping JDEI initiatives with more robust resources, including hiring a full-time JDEI Director, and diversified the student body, faculty and staff at the school.

Kate has been an effective steward of our campus resources as well. Under her leadership, our endowment has doubled from $6 million to $12 million. Financial aid for students grew by 30%, teacher salaries increased to make them more competitive with similar independent schools, and we embarked on the largest capital campaign in the history of the school in order to restore our beautiful and historic Strub Hall. Kate accomplished all of this while also navigating the demands of a global pandemic, successfully transitioning to online learning and safely returning to in-person instruction when it was possible. She provided hope, encouragement and inspiration to our Mayfield family, helping us persevere through the challenges of this pandemic. She has made an extraordinary school even stronger.

As we move forward, I want to assure you that our Board of Trustees is dedicated to finding a new Head of School who not only embraces our Holy Child mission, but also has the leadership traits to ensure the ongoing success of Mayfield Senior in the future. We will conduct a nationwide search in partnership with the renowned search firm RG 175. Search consultants Tom Hudnut and Arlyce Seibert have decades of experience as highly successful Heads of Schools and are demonstrated leaders in the field. I am pleased to share that Jane Collins Hawley, Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees and an alum from the Class of 1986, will be chairing the search committee. As a student leader, an alum and a Trustee, Jane’s work on behalf of the Mayfield community positions her to effectively lead the search to bring the next mission-driven leader to our beloved school.

 

In the coming months, we will be reaching out to the community for input in a variety of ways to incorporate your feedback into our search process. To ensure our search process is transparent and inclusive—keeping our faculty, staff, students, parents, alums and friends informed—we will post updates on this webpage and will send periodic emails. 

 

As we embark on this search for our next Head of School, we will cherish the remaining time we have to work with Kate. There will be many opportunities to celebrate and honor her over the next year. For now, please join me and the Board in thanking Kate and giving her our support in this final year of an impactful career at Mayfield Senior School.