Building relationships

Coming off of two years of isolation to varying degrees, all four alumni put a special emphasis on getting to know the people of their schools face-to-face.

Luna-Vedder held a Back-toSchool Road Show this past fall where she visited every high school campus for a pep rally attended by the high schoolers and students from each of the feeder schools to lay out the vision for the 2022-2023 school year. She made a point of attending every community event she could, networking with anyone and everyone who would be important to decisionmaking in the county.

“Our theme throughout this year is: We are better together. If there are issues, then bring them to our attention and let’s work together to solve them, instead of being negative. If we work on this collectively, we can solve shortcomings as a community,” she said.

Green started his role in Arkansas vowing to be hands-on, to spend at least 60% of every day in the classrooms of the district and riding all 10 bus routes to get the student and driver experience firsthand. He continues to do meet-and-greet sessions and moonlights as a Little League coach to be involved with parents and the community.

Such in-person activity means he has to work some late nights, but it is crucial to have on-the-ground knowledge to make good decisions and it builds the trust of his teachers, he said.

Sullivan also personally visited all 50 of his schools, striving to combat burnout by delivering the message that “you have permission to be a person, before you are a teacher,” he said. “If you aren’t well, then you can’t be a good teacher.”

In her efforts to build relationships with students, Stephens set up high school and middle school student advisory committees, established a gallery for student art to be displayed and sends birthday cards designed by students each year to her employees.

“It is important for us at the district office to remember why we are here,” she said. “Students are our why.”

Jean Luna-Vedder (’17)

Clarksville-Montgomery County School System, Tennessee, Director of Schools

Like many members of the Clarksville community, Luna-Vedder came to Clarksville in 2007 via the military, as a spouse. She had been teaching in Iowa, Washington and North Carolina since 1997. Three years after relocating to Montgomery County, she became an assistant principal and then a principal.

Through this journey, she began to see the greater impact on what happens in the classroom that a district level education official can have through policies and influences. She began relishing the opportunity to address issues in education on a district or statewide level.

She first worked as director of high schools for Clarksville Montgomery County, then moved to the Tennessee Department of Education as chief of programs, but she knew she would likely work again at the district level for the school system where all four of her children graduated.

“I remained deeply invested in this community and its education and what was going on in the school system,” she said.

Toriano Green (’14)

Osceola School District, Arkansas, Superintendent

Green, a West Memphis native came to Nashville for college at Tennessee State University and became a longtime teacher, coach and assistant principal in Metro Nashville Public Schools. “When it comes to leadership, someone believed in me more than I believed in myself,” he said of an administrator who made him a dean in his second year in education.

Earning his doctorate helped him climb the ladder to assistant principal in Nashville’s Whites Creek High school with 1,400 students. But when Osceola County, Arkansas, called, the siren song of returning to his home state drew him back. He served as an assistant superintendent for an entire county with 1,100 students from 2018 to 2021. Now as superintendent he works 45 minutes from where he grew up.

Before moving, Green honed his doctorate-level skills as assistant principal at Nashville’s Jere Baxter Middle School, where he contributed to the school’s rise from the below expectations category to the above expectations category on the state’s teacher evaluation system.

James Sullivan (’14)

Rutherford County School District, Tennessee, Director of Schools

On July 1, Sullivan was appointed director of schools for Rutherford County, one of the fastestgrowing districts in Tennessee and the one where he was educated while growing up.

While studying for his doctorate, he served as the principal of Harris Middle School in Bedford County, and was able to immediately use what he was learning. He led the school from the brink of takeover status by the state and boosted it to a Level 5 status, the highest rank available in the state, an experience he views as his own personal mission field. Sullivan has also served as an adjunct professor at Lipscomb.

While very busy serving in these leadership roles and balancing pandemic life, Sullivan’s young son, Declan, was diagnosed with leukemia. While Declan went through extensive procedures, Sullivan continued to maintain his commitment to all of the students he was serving in the district while also supporting his son by, among other things, shaving his head in support of Declan during his chemotherapy treatments.

Catherine Stephens (’12)

Tullahoma City School District, Tennessee, Superintendent

Stephens, whose first name is pronounced Katreen, was born in Sweden and spoke four languages by the time her family moved back to the United States.

Virginia Beach was her first teaching post, and in her first year of teaching, Stephens’ principal recognized her leadership potential. “You are brand new to this school and the teachers on your team are already leaning on you,” he told her. He ignited a spark of interest in leadership with that feedback.

After earning her master’s at Sam Houston State University, she became a principal in Murfreesboro and had the opportunity to open a new school: Scales Elementary. She moved from a principal position to an associate director position for Franklin Special School District in Tennessee while finishing her doctorate, and she has walked out the best practices she learned at Lipscomb over the past 10 years, she said.

Stephens also taught as a Lipscomb University adjunct for a time, and her daughter, Kelsea Woolfolk (’20), graduated from the Lipscomb College of Pharmacy.