Retired School Superintendent Finds Community at HIU

As an English teacher, principal, and superintendent, Tom McMorran has always been interested in creating a healthy, vibrant community for students. After retiring, he enrolled in HIU's MA in Interreligious Studies, where he found a community that offered a similar environment to the one he created for his students. 

"When I retired from education, I wanted to find that kind of community for my own learning—a place where you're warmly welcomed and wanted. Certainly, HIU is a spot for that," Tom said. 

An Episcopalian, Tom has been active in his local parish since 1991. Seeking personal growth, he wanted to understand his own faith better and was open to the views of others. "It is okay to say I hold these beliefs to be true, but that doesn't mean your beliefs are false, it means that they are different."  

Tom believes that when students feel that they belong to a community, good learning results. This learning becomes even more solid when there are differences and diverse interpretations in the classroom. "If everybody agrees with everybody, there is not much chance for new learning," he said. “In the classes I have taken at HIU, there have been lots of rich conversations about different views on the world." 

The same thinking that led him to have a successful career in the school system is also something he shared with struggling teenage students. He would tell them, "The universe wants you to be happy. If you are pursuing your interests and your gifts, you will create a future."

In turn, Tom believes he was called to the next step in every stage of his career in education. "As each of us build our knowledge, our dispositions, and education, suddenly opportunities present themselves that we couldn't have undertaken early," he says.  

As an aspiring minister, Tom doesn't anticipate success or failure; he lets the process follow its course. He believes a happy person is one "whose skills and abilities and the challenges they are trying to solve line up. So that is the journey I'm on now."  

Changing careers after 35 years in public education to become an ordained minister might seem like a radical switch, but Tom believes these aren't entirely unrelated. "If you think of the word school administrator, the word ministry is right in the middle of it," he said. "And a minister is someone who cares for a group."