Michael Smerconish ’14: Current Head of School, L. Hamilton Clark and next year’s Head of School, TJ Locke recently announced that Dr. Delvin Dinkins will serve as Episcopal’s next Head of Upper School, effective July 1, 2013. Dinkins, currently the Director of Assessment and Accountability for the Tredyffrin-Easttown School District, will replace Geoffrey Wagg, who is leaving to become Head of School at the Waynflete School in Portland, Maine.
Tracie Lee, who coordinates the hiring of Episcopal faculty, described the lengthy hiring process for Head of Upper School.
After hearing of Wagg’s potential departure, Episcopal began speaking with administrators of other schools, searching for recommendations. In addition, EA placed ads in the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) newsletter and hired Carney Sandoe and Associates, a professional consulting firm for teacher employment. Lee says that she ultimately spoke with sixty one individuals interested in the position.
Lee also mentioned that they received interest from three current Episcopal faculty members, all of whom were given face-to-face interviews. Clark commented, “We felt [these three individuals] were terrific, [but] they didn’t necessarily have the experience or the credentials that we identified in this group of finalists.”
According to Lee, Dinkins was recommended to Episcopal by one of Dinkin’s colleagues from University of Pennsylvania’s doctorate program in educational leadership. Coincidentally, Locke graduated from the esteemed Penn program in the same class as Dinkins.
After examining the resumes of these candidates, Lee recalled, “We had twelve people for me, Clark, Locke and Hall to meet with on a Sunday at the Shererd House. It was like speed dating…it was terrible. From that group we decided on four individuals as finalists.”
The four finalists each spent a day at Episcopal in early December, during which they met with department heads and were interviewed by both a faculty and a student committee.
“The [student] committee was a mixed group of sophomores and juniors that met a few times at lunch to interview the candidates,” Melanie Kovacs ’15, a member of the committee, noted.
Kovacs revealed, “We asked the candidates questions about aspects of the Upper School, their thoughts on them, and how they planned to fill the Head of Upper School position to the best of their ability.”
Rohan Rajagopalan ’14, another committee member, emphasized that “every candidate was strong and so any issue we had with a candidate was minor. Each candidate would likely have done a fine job leading the upper school.”
“We were looking for qualities like enthusiasm, drive, sincerity, polish, and mainly the ability to establish a positive, personal and lasting relationships with students,” added Ethan Markman ’14, another committee member.
Following each interview, students and faculty submitted responses to eight open-ended questions about their opinion of the candidate; they did not explicitly vote for one particular individual.
From these responses, Clark, Locke, Lee, Stephen Morris, Head of Middle School, Doug Parsons, Dean of Faculty, and Catherine Hall, Academic Dean, were able to narrow it down to two candidates.
At that point, “It was a really hard decision,” Lee recalled, “because they were both just great.”
Clark noted that an initial concern with Dinkins was his lack of experience in independent schools. “The other three [finalists] were all people who had a lot of experience in independent school work,” he stated. “I’d say that initially when we were working with these four people, that was a concern [about Dinkins].”
Clark said that it was enthusiastic feedback from Dinkins’s references that alleviated any concerns regarding his transition to independent schools.
Clark commented, “The reaction that [Dinkins] got here, from the students and faculty was great; [however,] I’d say the thing that put [Dinkins] over the top was the feedback we got from some of his references.”
Lee was able to speak to many of Dinkins’ colleagues and friends who “just thought the world of him.”
Geoffrey Wagg, although not involved in the selection process itself, did interview Dinkins along with the other three finalists.
“I told him to make sure he gets to know the students as quickly as possible because at the end of the day this is about the students and their ability to thrive,” recalled Wagg. “I think Dinkins is going to be great. He wants to come here for all the right reasons.”

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