Kitty Quinn, the assistant superintendent of Catholic schools for the Diocese of Columbus, was expecting to do a practice interview, not accept a job position where she would remain for more than 30 years.
“The gentleman who was the president of the high school I was (teaching) at had gotten a job here in the Diocese of Columbus as the superintendent, and I was finishing up my master’s, and he said, ‘Do you want to do some practice interviewing?’
“So, I came out, and I interviewed for the job at Notre Dame in Portsmouth and didn’t get the job, but based on that interview, there was an opening in the central office, and they offered me that job. I moved from Iowa and have been here ever since.”
That was August 1989. For 34 years, Quinn served the Columbus diocese in the Office of Catholic Schools, where she started. She officially retired on June 30 this year.
Prior to her 34 years at the diocese, Quinn taught for two years at a Catholic middle school in Massachusetts and for 14 years at a Catholic high school in Des Moines, Iowa, for a total of 50 years in Catholic education.
“It has allowed me to truly grasp what it means to have a vocation and not just a job,” she said. “My faith, through the vocation of working in Catholic schools, has truly come alive, has been fulfilled, has been challenged. It has complemented work that I do in my parish.”
Quinn teaches the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults (RCIA), for those converting to the Catholic faith, at Columbus St. Timothy Church, where she has been a parishioner since moving to Columbus. She began teaching RCIA classes in Des Moines.
Quinn was born in Los Angeles. Her father was an agent for the FBI, so growing up, her family moved across the country. Quinn lived in Detroit; Atlantic City, New Jersey; and Des Moines.
Her father is originally from Lima, Ohio, although Quinn did not live in the Buckeye State until working for the Diocese of Columbus.
Quinn graduated from the College of Our Lady of the Elms in Massachusetts and then started teaching. She taught in Massachusetts for two years before moving with her family to Des Moines, where she earned a master’s degree in administration for secondary education at Drake University.
While working for the Office of Catholic Schools, Quinn earned a second master’s degree in religious education from Loyola University New Orleans. She said the degree was a “huge asset” in working with Catholic schools and supporting leadership in the schools.
As assistant superintendent for the diocese, Quinn handled safety and security, crisis management in schools, public relations and communication with parents across the diocese and organized administrative meetings for principals.
She worked with Nationwide Children’s Hospital on Project Adam to get more automatic defibrillators into school buildings, she said.
For 20 years, Quinn also directed the accreditation process for diocesan schools. Catholic schools in Ohio must be accredited, or recognized, by the state to receive state funding.
To be recognized as a member of the Ohio Catholic School Accrediting Association, Quinn said, Catholic schools must be in compliance with the Ohio Department of Education. This means that teachers must be appropriately licensed, school buildings must be properly inspected and testing protocols and courses of study must adhere to state standards.
Continuous improvement is also a requirement for being an accredited school. Every Catholic school must do a self-study and develop a goal for the school based on its Catholic identity.
This is the most important piece, Quinn said, because schools must have a four-year vision and see the plan “come alive and implemented” in the school.
“This job here allowed me to grow personally, allowed me to grow professionally,” she said. “It was encouraged to go to conferences, to learn, to study. I got another master’s when I was here, so there was no doubt that there was always a professional challenge.
“The wide array of superintendents that I have worked with have always given me the latitude to be creative, to suggest new designs, new opportunities, to build new processes and programs. ‘The same old’ doesn’t sit for very long with me.”
Quinn worked with five superintendents in the diocese, including most recently Dr. Adam Dufault, and she had a variety of titles in the office.
“Kitty’s tenure in the Office of Catholic Schools has spanned three decades with four bishops and five superintendents,” Dufault said. “So much has changed since she started here – not just in Our Catholic Schools but in the world of education – yet she has provided a constancy for our administrators through the years, helping them implement new initiatives and new courses of study and to move with the changes in the field.
“Through it all, Kitty has been a stable and steady presence, providing the guidance, support and encouragement that our school leaders have needed.”
When she began in 1989, Quinn worked in educational services. The position included visiting schools in the diocese to talk with teachers, work with the administration and connect schools with available services. She also served as the assistant superintendent for elementaries.
Quinn had various “director” titles in the Office of Catholic Schools, one of which was managing professional development in schools, which is a type of continuing education and career training for teachers to gain skills through workshops and conferences.
She also served as a director of leadership. In this role, Quinn said, she worked to develop an induction program for administrators new to the diocese or new to a school.
“That involved everything from working with buildings and helping them – on an elementary level or a high school level – decide who they wanted to hire to supporting who they were hiring to helping them in the evaluation process,” she said. “More than anything, that role put me in touch with the leadership of the diocese in the buildings.”
Quinn said working with leadership in Catholic schools was one of the most fulfilling aspects of her job.
“I’ve been able to touch all of those leaders in their development, in their growth,” she said. “That’s been very exciting to watch someone come in as a new principal and their eyes big as a deer like, ‘What have I gotten myself into?’ to, in a couple years, with absolute confidence, being able to lead a faith-based group from their teachers to their students to their parents and having their vocation come alive.”
Quinn said recognizing “how challenging it is to be a building principal and the ability to be available to them, to help them sort through questions or a direction that they want to go, to be honest with them” are among her greatest achievements from the past 30 years.
Supporting the diocese’s school principals was also a way Quinn measured success.
“If they are successful, then I’m successful, and our office is successful,” she said. “It’s more about them and their ability to support their teachers, help their students any way they can and to make Catholic education available.”
Hearing from those who benefitted from a Catholic education, Quinn said, has made a difference in her faith.
“My faith has only been grounded and strengthened, interestingly enough, by hearing from some of the kids that come back, or teachers or principals who talk about what a difference it made to take it from a faith-based approach, and in those confines, my faith gets strengthened,” she said.
“It gets reassuring to know that it does make a difference because that’s one of the problems with being a teacher or someone in education. You don’t always hear back from people that pass through your life, depending upon what grade you taught, those kids are long gone.
“The lives that they lead, the differences that they make and the changes that they make make it all worthwhile. We’re here to make it better (for them), and for me, my faith comes alive because I think it makes it better through Catholic education.”
Bishop Earl Fernandes named three new assistant superintendents in the diocese, who began July 1.
Seth Burkholder, the associate director of data analysis and finance for the Office of Catholic Schools, will be the assistant superintendent for operations. Holly Peterson, who served as the interim principal at Columbus Immaculate Conception School, will be the assistant superintendent for academics.
Sister John Paul Maher, OP, a member of the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist religious order and principal of Worthington St. Michael School, will be the assistant superintendent for administration.
“In conjunction with Adam (Dufault) and with the continued needs of the diocese – the growth, the development, the shifting and the changing – those (three) people and their skill sets will divvy up a different set of responsibilities, and it’s also prime time to revitalize where the next step is going to be,” Quinn said.
“With change in personnel, it allows new things to evolve and happen and be designed, and that’s the opportunity for this to happen.”
In her retirement, Quinn will contract with the Office of Catholic Schools as a consultant, she said, and continue managing the accreditation process for the 50 Catholic schools in the Columbus diocese.
She will also continue to serve on the advisory board to the director of the Ohio Catholic School Accrediting Association. Quinn has represented the Diocese of Columbus on the board for the past 20 years, along with representatives from the five other Catholic dioceses in Ohio.
As a consultant, Quinn will also work to enhance the office’s relationship with Ohio Dominican University. The Office of Catholic Schools cooperates with the university, located in Columbus, to offer graduate work for diocesan principals seeking to earn a master’s degree in leadership.
Quinn will also work to support Special People in Catholic Education, or SPICE, groups that exist at several diocesan schools. The group raises awareness and money for supplemental services for typical, developmental and accelerated learners.
As she prepares for retirement, Quinn is grateful for her colleagues, who shared her love of Catholic education, and she is confident in the work to be done.
“The work of the office is key to the mission of the Church,” she said.
“The people who are in the office, who I have worked with over the years, the people coming and going, the common component to all of them has been a love of Catholic education, and past and present, have the desire to make that available to as many people as want a Catholic education, but probably even more importantly, is to always make sure that it is of the highest quality.”
