As the new admissions season gets underway,  Jennifer Thomas is gearing up to take on a new job in the SLUH admissions office. Thomas was hired to fill the position vacated when Ann Murphy was promoted to Admissions Director.

Thomas, mother of freshman Tucker Thomas, is an alum of the Jesuit institution St. Ignatius College Prep in Chicago. She was a member of the school’s first co-ed class in its history. After graduating from high school, Thomas earned her bachelor’s degree in Political Science with minors in Business and French from Providence College.

Shortly after graduating Thomas went on to work in the private sector before taking some time off to start a family. After her family time, she started a career in early childhood education, and most recently worked at Franklin Covey, a management service company.

“I joined Franklin Covey as an education coach and consultant, working with schools all over the world instilling cultures of leadership and student empowerment in their schools,” said Thomas.

Thomas found the job when looking through SLUH’s website.

“I was talking with my husband about the logistics of how we would get our son down here. My daughter just went off to Boston for college and because I travel a lot for work we were concerned how it work out,” said Thomas. “Then I decided to look on SLUH’s website and I found this job and I decided to apply for it.”

Thomas got the job in mid-June, and started on July 1.

“We knew that Ann Murphy is the jack-of-all-trades and she can do it all. And we knew when she was taking the director’s job that, since Ann does so much, we would need somebody who would have to take on that big of a role,” said Assistant Director of Admissions Adam Cruz, who also actively participated in the search for a replacement.

Murphy, who was instrumental in the hiring, decided on Thomas for a number of reasons.

“She’s worked in a variety of positions, mainly in our public schools,” said Murphy. “Since we work with a lot of public school applicants, we thought she could really benefit our team.”

Murphy also said Thomas’s experience in admissions process helped her get the job.

“She had just been through the process and could really be instrumental in critiquing some of the problems and helping us to fix them,” said Murphy.

While she transitions into her job here at SLUH, Thomas is going to be completing a variety of tasks.

“I’m having her work a lot with our parent ambassadors,” said Murphy. “She’s developed a great system for us to have parents of current students get in contact with parents of prospective students. The second thing I want her to do is work more in the office, contacting and helping parents of prospective families and visitors while I go out and meet with more schools and principals to get the message out about SLU High.”

Thomas also has goals for her time here.

“In my role as admissions assistant my intention is to help Ann Murphy in broadening our outreach to expand upon diversity, and to expand upon the school, from where we draw our students from,” said Thomas. “We enjoy kids from over 86 different zip codes and countless elementary schools but there are still ones that are left untapped. And based on my experience with youth empowerment I’m confident we can expand where we bring students in from.”

“I feel like I’ve come home,” said Thomas on her arrival at SLUH. “It’s been a couple of decades—I won’t tell you how many—since I’ve been in a Jesuit institution, but there is no better education, no better atmosphere, to not only be a student, but also to be a parent and to be a staff member.”