In August before the fall semester began, The Preuss School UC San Diego confirmed Dr. Steitz as its new principal after a nationwide search.

“It was finally a phone call after about the ninth interview, where Dr. Griffith called and said you know what I think we’ve made our selection, you are the selection. How do you feel about being the next principal at the Preuss school? And I stopped it right there and said absolutely when do we start,” Dr. Steitz, principal, said. “I was thrilled. It was a long process, but I enjoyed it.”

As of now, Preuss has been on remote learning since March 13th, due to COVID-19 safety. Creating a disadvantage to Dr. Steitz, because he is unable to get the full experience of getting to know the students he will be working with. However, he has managed to contribute and interact with the students as much as he has been able too.

“[Adapting to an off-campus working environment] has been a little bit difficult,” Dr. Steitz expressed. “But I always try to look at the bright side of things.”

“I always try to look at the bright side of things,” Dr. Steitz said. But that isn’t always possible. The reality is that everything has its bright sides and down sides.

Even though Dr. Steitz tries his best, he still has many concerns about the social connection of its students and the community.

“The downside I really think, is our social connection to our entire community. Our learning community there at Preuss,” Dr. Steitz stated. “I worry about the connections that you make with your teachers.”

Although he has these worries and concerns, he brings up solutions and ideas to fix these problems. For example he and the Preuss staff decided to add an extra hour at the end of the school day, so the students could get extra support with their teachers if they needed to.

Dr. Steitz stated that they added the Scholar Centered Support Hour at the end of the school day, so the students could get the support they needed and ask the questions they had. He said that it was more important for him to end the school day at 3 o’clock, so his students could have the ability to set some time to talk with their teachers. Even though this has been working, he is still worried about the students that don’t take advantage of this opportunity and instead decide to start falling behind.

“My biggest worry is that some of the scholars don’t have the agency to take that initiative. So my worry is we don’t follow up fast enough to connect the scholars and they fall further behind, instead of reaching out and making those contacts and getting the help they need,” Dr. Steitz expressed.

Based on these concerns and worries, Dr. Steitz has in mind many ideas and purposes for this school to grow strong and strive for the best, united as one.

“My main purpose is to create a culture of basically a servant organization. It is when you put the needs of others in front of your needs and you work to help make people better around you knowing that it’s not about who gets the credit, it’s about getting the mission done because the mission is so important,” Dr. Steitz stated. “My number one purpose is to be a servant leader and support the students and the staff, at making the dream happen. The Preuss promise come true.”

Overall Dr. Steitz has a lot of expectations for Preuss and its community planned. But his main expectation is to work safely ahead.

“My dissertation really focused on proactive campus supervision, which is school safety. But it’s about connecting with kids,” Dr. Steitz, principal, said.

This demonstrates that he has a vision of Preuss thriving towards victory and we as students should be thankful and take advantage of all the opportunities he is giving to us.