ARTICLES

Dan Dolan hired for new Catholic schools role

By Steve Neill
Of The Catholic Virginian

Dan Dolan, recently appointed to the new position of assistant superintendent of Catholic Schools for operational planning, hopes that he will be a positive resource for the schools he will be visiting throughout the diocese.

“I don’t want to tell the schools what to do, but rather help them identify needs, clarify priorities, and strategize on improving key elements of our program like enrollment, retention and marketing,” he told The Catholic Virginian.

Mr. Dolan, the fifth of seven children who grew up in Bethesda, MD, just outside of Washington, is himself a product of Catholic schools.

Growing up, he attended St. Jane de Chantal School in Bethesda and then graduated from Archbishop Carroll High School in Washington.

After graduation from high school he enlisted in the Air Force. During his military stint, he served in England and Spokane, WA.

He then began college studies and he received a bachelor’s degree in business from the University of Maryland.

He has three master’s degrees. The first was in curriculum instruction from Chapman University in Orange, CA, and the others are in biology from the University of Arizona and in educational leadership and policy studies from Virginia Tech.

“I’ve taught in elementary, middle and high school in Catholic independent and public schools,” Mr. Dolan said.

He most recently was principal of Guardian Angel Regional Catholic School in Staunton, a diocesan school which closed in early August because it was unable to reach enrollment benchmarks set by the diocese.

There was a sense of sadness about the school’s closing, Mr. Dolan said, because “a lot of people worked very hard to keep the doors open.”

“But there was also a realization that we did all we could,” he asserted. “We couldn’t look back and later say ‘Why didn’t we do that?’”

He earlier served as president of Charlottesville Catholic School, another school which the laity took initiative in establishing. The school now has about 300 students.

With recommendations from the Meitler Study of diocesan Catholic Schools and from the SACS accreditation of the Office of Catholic Schools, Mr. Dolan feels it is likely that each school already has a strategic plan or is developing one.

“My hope is to bring all those plans together into a single effort,” he said.

He cited the geographically large Diocese of Richmond which has Catholic schools from Virginia Beach as far west as St. Anne School in Bristol.

“Schools may not know the challenges of other schools,” Mr. Dolan said.

“As a liaison, I hope to take some of the practices that worked in one school and share them with another.

“One of the challenges that historically faced the Office of Catholic Schools is that it is very difficult to spend time in the schools to get to know them.

“This new position dedicated to this issue should improve the Office of Catholic Schools’ awareness of what’s going on at the local level.”

Mr. Dolan seeks to have transparency and candid discussions with his contacts with the schools.

“In this new role, I see myself far more as a listener and servant than a director,” he explained.

He hopes to develop an informal relationship with the schools through frequent visits.

Some of those visits will be brief, others will be longer, he said.

Mr. Dolan is married and lives in Blacksburg with his wife, Erin, an assistant professor in biochemistry at Virginia Tech, and their 19-month-old daughter, Tara.

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