After Mychal Thom left a high school principal job in Fort Wayne, Indiana, to pursue a role in higher education, his wife asked him if he thought he’d ever return to leading secondary schools.
Thom told her he didn’t know, but he singled out Faith Lutheran Middle School and High School as a place he’d like to learn more about should an opportunity ever present itself.
So when longtime Faith Lutheran President and CEO Steven J. Buuck announced his retirement last year, opening the job of leading the Summerlin private school — the largest in Nevada and the largest Lutheran school in the country — Thom left his native Midwest to work at the place he called a “beacon” in private and Lutheran education.
Over his more than 20-year career, Thom has led schools at all levels of Lutheran education. He was the principal at a pre-K through eighth grade Lutheran school in his home state of Michigan and made stops as the head of school at Lutheran high schools in Texas and Indiana. He most recently served as the assistant to the president of Concordia University, St. Paul, a private Lutheran college in Minnesota.
Thom began work as president and CEO of Faith Lutheran Middle School and High School on Monday. Come next school year, his wife, Lauren Thom, will join the school as a middle school computer science teacher, and his youngest son will enroll at Faith Lutheran for seventh grade, he said.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal sat town with Thom on Thursday to talk about his background, religion’s role in education and his priorities for leading the more than 2,200 students at Faith Lutheran. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: What inspired you to pursue a career in Christian education, and what inspired you to come all the way out here to Las Vegas to Faith Lutheran?
A: I went to a Lutheran school, K-8. There wasn’t a Lutheran high school in Monroe, Michigan, where I grew up, but I went to a Catholic high school. My parents — I have seven brothers and sisters, so all eight of us — they really invested in Christian education. It’s made such a huge impact on me as an individual as I was growing up.
When I graduated from college, I just really wanted to enjoy being around students (and) the energy of schools. I enjoy faculty, teachers, and how they make such an impact and impression on young people. So I was a teacher for a while, and then I really enjoyed the leadership aspect of that, to really lift up teachers, lift up staff to be able to do what they do.
What drew me out here is just the environment, the culture and the opportunity to lead a place that certainly has been tremendously successful and is looking to continue to grow and improve.
What roles do you believe faith and religion play in a child’s education?
As you grow up, you go through lots of different things. There’s challenges that come up around you as you go through different relationship changes and friendships and all that kind of stuff. I think that the steadying nature of faith-based education is really helpful for students.
It doesn’t only impact the students, it impacts their families as well. (There are a) countless number of times where maybe families choose a school because of its excellent reputation in academics or for its safety, but they’re not really looking for a religious experience or faith-based education. However, when they get there and their students start to experience that environment, the family then becomes impacted, as well.
Your predecessor here, Steven Buuck, got the ball rolling on a lot of different campus expansion projects. Are you going to continue this campus expansion?
It’s humbling to come into a place that’s just done so well, that’s been so successful. Part of the reality is, when our current 65 acres is just built out, it’s hard to find a spot here where you can build something new.
We’ve got our FLex program, our hybrid online program. We could probably have more students in that program. I do think the idea is, let’s continue to grow. The ministry here at Faith Lutheran, we want that to impact as many people as possible, as many students and their families as possible.
There will be some real strategic initiatives and planning on working with the board of directors here on what are our next moves from a growth perspective in making sure that we’re diligent in what we’re doing here, and that as we expand out, we not only have the resources, but can make a sizable impact whatever we do going forward. I do think there’ll be some growth and expansion.
What do you feel that expansion does to serve the students here at Faith Lutheran?
Opportunities. When students see that you’re continuing to grow, and they see the expansion — you’re building, you’re growing — they tend to want to grow into that. They see the investment that’s being made into them and their education and into their experience and I think it motivates them. As we continue to expand, I think it gives them an opportunity to grow into that and to dream, to continue to move forward, be motivated as students and know that the sky’s the limit for them.
What are some of the goals and priorities that you have coming into Faith Lutheran? What are some of the things you’re looking to accomplish?
First and foremost, you just learn the people. Buildings are great, and programs are great and all of those things are great, but it’s the people behind those that really make it all happen. Developing those relationships across the board, big goal of mine so that they know my investment into the ministry here and who I am so that we can serve together.
Another is then working with the board of directors. We’re due to create our next strategic plan, and so we’ll be working closely with the board over the next several months to create our next strategic plan and look at which initiatives are going to be at the top of that list.
The third would be just attending things, get a chance to go to theater performances and games and events and all kinds of stuff to absorb the culture that the students bring to the place. A goal of mine is to try to absorb that culture so that then I can go out and talk intelligently about what it’s like here at Faith.
Contact Spencer Levering at slevering@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0253.
