Morgan Delp Goes the Extra Mile
Written by Doug Goodnough
Morgan Delp, ’15, has shown she is up for a challenge.
When she decided to attend Hillsdale College and become a member of the Chargers women’s tennis team, which was restarting after a long hiatus, she proved herself a mainstay of a program that now is established as one of the best in the Great Midwest Athletic Conference.
After graduation, she decided to return to her alma mater, Toledo Central Catholic High School (CCHS), where she worked as a journalism and history teacher. And when CCHS was experiencing a fluctuation in leadership, she again stepped forward. Now, the 30-year-old is beginning her second year as principal of the school of approximately 600 students nestled in the heart of downtown Toledo.
“(Teaching) is definitely the part I miss the most,” Delp said of leaving the classroom for a leadership role. “I think you hear a lot of administrators say that. I really miss being in the classroom with students. I had to learn to teach in other ways, whether it’s teaching other teachers, or teaching students from a behavioral or motivational standpoint.”
Delp knew early on that she might want to move into a leadership role eventually, so she enrolled in a one-year nonprofit administration master’s program at the University of Notre Dame. After completing her degree in the spring of 2020, there was an opening for a dean of academics at CCHS.
She was hired and started July 1, 2020. Her first task was trying to reopen in the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It was my job to figure out how to start school in the midst of all these pandemic regulations and quarantine laws,” Delp said. “But it was probably the best test for me as a leader and a professional. It was really tough at the time. But there was a real benefit in starting during that time. There’s always challenges in education and to start out with something like that…we had to work together a lot more.”
Last summer, she moved into the principal role and said she learned a lot in her first year.
“The biggest change in becoming principal is the growth in the management aspect,” Delp said. “I got a lot more experience in having difficult conversations with employees, or dealing and helping employees with situations that were going on in their personal lives that affected their work and how to support them best as a person. I think those were the kind of things that are hard to be prepared for until you are in the situation and have worked through them.”
Managing teachers who once taught her as a student was an adjustment. And last year, her first year on the job, her younger brother, Winston, was a member of the senior class.
“He was a real trooper about it,” she said of her brother, who is a freshman at Hillsdale College this fall. “I give him a lot of credit. It’s probably not easy or ideal to have your sister be the principal. But I personally enjoyed and loved being able to see him enjoy his high school experience and be a part of that in a small way.”
Delp said her Hillsdale College experience helped her appreciate the value of education and prepared her well for her future roles.
“Initially, I felt really equipped to teach the content I was teaching even though I didn’t have a traditional teaching degree, just because of my depth of knowledge. Most importantly, the passion for what I was teaching was really honed at Hillsdale,” she said. “Also, the work ethic that I developed at Hillsdale, and not just through my classes and courses of study. I took advantage of as many things as possible.”
Besides tennis, Delp was a member of The Collegian staff, and was also involved in the Student Affairs and Career Services offices, not to mention her Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority.
“At Hillsdale, it was for a purpose that I really believed in,” she said. “That’s how I feel here at Central Catholic, too. Hillsdale taught me that when you believe in what you are doing, it’s worth it to be really invested and go the extra mile.”
She said she realizes the value of education now more than ever.
“The importance of education is something that I knew coming out of Central, but I really knew coming out of Hillsdale,” Delp said. “That’s something that a lot of students and the families who we serve haven’t been exposed to. The importance of education to break cycles and advance people’s lives is always at the forefront of what I do. There’s probably not another institution in the country more committed to that than Hillsdale College.”
Delp still enjoys playing tennis and has added pickleball and platform tennis to her activity list. Living a short distance from CCHS, she said she enjoys being back in her hometown—and at her alma mater.
“I love it here. I’m not sure that I would even be in education if it wasn’t here at Central Catholic,” she said. “That’s how much I believe in our school and our students and what we do.”
Doug Goodnough, ’90, is Hillsdale’s director of Alumni Marketing. He enjoys connecting with fellow alumni in new and wonderful ways.
Published in August 2023