Education Alumna Receives School Leader of the Year Award
Elizabeth Jamison-Dunn MAT ’11, MAEd ’13 was recognized with an award from Teach for America for her leadership as principal of a Chicago charter school.
Jamison-Dunn was presented with the Zell Family Alumni School Leader of the Year Award on May 1. The annual award recognizes an outstanding teacher in the Chicago-Northwest Indiana region who is a past member of Teach for America and has “exemplified, shaped and maintained excellent practices in their school.”
A partner of Dominican University, Teach for America is a national nonprofit that places recent college graduates in teaching positions at schools that are underserved. The organization brought Jamison-Dunn to Catalyst Circle Rock Charter School as an eighth-grade teacher in 2007, the year that the school, located in Chicago’s Austin neighborhood, opened. She is now in her 10th year as principal.
It was her involvement with Teach for America that led Jamison-Dunn to choose Dominican for her graduate studies in education, she said.
“The training I received from Dominican around instruction, curriculum and educational leadership is what I apply in my work today,” she said.
Dominican’s professors, she added, “helped us to be the best leaders we can be.”
“There’s an emphasis on rigor and equity that we received at Dominican,” Jamison-Dunn said. “And the mission and vision of Dominican is aligned with my personal mission and vision, so it was easy to apply the instruction to my everyday work.”
Jamison-Dunn describes herself as “driven by a lifelong passion for social justice and educational equity,” with a commitment to “building systems where Black and brown children thrive."
A strong supporter of arts education, Jamison-Dunn has helped to grow the arts at Catalyst Circle Rock and expand access to the greater community.
“I never want my children to feel they are limited in terms of what they have access to,” she explained.
Jamison-Dunn has been recognized with several previous awards, including the 2012 Teach for America Chicago Alumni Distinguished Teacher Award and 2024 CPS Game Changer Award for Charter Leaders.