WELCOME BACK!!! MR. DOEPNER

Tripp Doepner is from Winston-Salem, NC. Mr. Doepner has two younger sisters who were also born in NC. One sister is a teacher in Cary, NC and the other is a lawyer in Seattle, WA.
Mr. Doepner’s family includes a number of educators including his father, Dr. R. W. Doepner, Jr., a recently retired professor and college administrator at Mars Hill College, a Southern Baptist college located near Asheville, NC.
Mr. Doepner graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1986 with a BA in English Literature. He accepted a fellowship to pursue a Master of Arts in Teaching English degree at UNC. Mr. Doepner began teaching after completing his M.A.T. in 1988. He was selected as a NC Teaching Fellow in Science and as a NC Writing Fellow in 1989, allowing him to study genetic manipulation (at Appalachian State University) and the writing process (at Wake Forest University) in these two programs.
He came to Riverside, CA as a CA Educational Research Cooperative (CERC) Fellow at the University of CA, Riverside.  He was the second author of both an AERA paper and major journal article concerning the administrative process for creating and overseeing combination grade classes (www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=5001414264). While Mr. Doepner was at UCR (1991-1992), he became acquainted with research in the area of American Indian Education from the senior staff at CERC who administered grants in association with Sherman Indian High School.
Mr. Doepner accepted a position as English teacher at Sherman Indian High School in September 1992. He taught English, computer applications, and an intervention class he started with other department chairs and Mr. Dan Kenley (former assistant principal at SIHS and later founding principal at Desert Hot Springs High School). He taught at Sherman for three years, starting the AP English program that later became the college transition program administered through California Baptist University.   He also initiated the English as a Second Language Program. Mr. Doepner was also responsible for directing the gifted and talented (or GATE) program.
Mr. Doepner was selected as the Outstanding Academic Affairs Employee during his third year at SIHS (94-95). He returned to UNC during the 1995-1996 school year after receiving academic fellowships to pursue study in educational leadership. Mr. Doepner returned to SIHS as Academic Department Head for Core Academics after a year of study at UNC. In 1998 he received the U.S. Department of the Interior Star Award in recognition of his fiscal and personnel management.
He accepted the assistant principal’s position at Desert Hot Springs High School in December 1998 and began his work at the school (a new school still under construction) in January 1999. Among Mr. Doepner’s projects at DHSHS was the design of intervention programs to allow more students to pass and demonstrate mastery on the California High School Exit Exam or CAHSEE.
Mr. Doepner returned to Sherman Indian High School in the late spring of 2008 as principal.  Mr. Doepner has indicated he will focus his attention on providing students with the necessary programming to prepare graduates for higher education and the demands of an increasingly technological and changing world of work.