New Title: Principal Sullivan Earns Ed.D

Story by Dominika Kouassi '25

Principal Susie Sullivan is now Dr. Susie Sullivan, having officially obtained her doctorate degree in education. The six-year process was no easy feat given that she executed it while also providing leadership at Marian. 

Sullivan’s educational journey has been defined by a quest for more. After graduating from Marian in 1980, Sullivan earned her first degree in history at Carroll College in Helena, Montana. She then attended College of Saint Mary to get her teaching certificate and she started teaching history at Millard Public Schools. During this time, she earned her Master of Science in educational administration and supervision from University of Nebraska at Omaha.

When she started her role as principal at Marian, she learned that she could get her doctorate in education with a major in interdisciplinary leadership through a program at Creighton University. She was told by her advisor that she could finish the program in three or four years. Through an amused chuckle, Sullivan said, “I thought, ‘I can probably do that.’” That was not the case.

Though the process took longer than she thought, Sullivan pushed through. One of the factors that pushed her to continue pursuing her doctorate was the support from her students and faculty. “I think it is important for our students to see an all-female leadership team pursuing additional graduate-level education and doing different things.”

For the past six years, Sullivan has been completing assignments alongside the Marian student body. For her, the school work was easy and she felt really enriched by the content she learned, some even helping her in her job as principal. “I learned a lot… I really enjoyed the classes. Like in organizations, the number one reason people leave is because of fairness. So it’s really important that you are fair to everyone,” Sullivan said.

However the hardest part about getting her doctorate academically was finishing her dissertation. “ I had to let things go… I was adamant that I wouldn’t work on it [her dissertation] during school. So it was during break, mainly spring break and winter break that I got things done. The class work wasn’t an issue. But the dissertation, I had to submit things then wait for feedback which caused some hold up because my advisor had a family and life, too.”

In this program, students complete “a dissertation in practice. You have to pick a topic that will help you with your work that is applicable that no one else has studied before.” While picking her topic she was met with some conflict because there has been a lot of research done on math anxiety in students, but Sullivan recognized that teachers also had a part in this too. “I focused more on the teachers and what they see [in the classroom]. It was a qualitative study so there wasn’t a bunch of statistics or a survey, it was interviewing people,” Sullivan said. 

The formal title of her dissertation was “How Female Math Teachers Build Female Students’ Math Confidence: A Phenomenological Study.” “It was tough,” but for Sullivan the research was far more important than the long nights spent working on her 125+ page paper. “My dissertation was on building confidence in high school students in math class, by teachers. My solution to that is to have smaller classes or have a math tutor. It [her research]  confirmed that Algebra 2 with Trigonometry is the hardest math class… I talked to 10 teachers across the country… unsolicited, they told me that. I found it as a student very difficult… and when I started as principal here it was the class I got the most phone calls from parents about.” 

If there is anything that Sullivan can take from her research and apply to Marian students  is  "recognizing that having female math teachers is really important. It does help build confidence for our students when they see girls who are good at math. Every teacher I interviewed was in an all-girl environment… it builds confidence just being around all girls in a classroom… It’s a safe space. It helped me realize that there are things that I can do [at Marian] to keep that alive.”