"Powerful relationships are the heart of what makes UPSM a great learning community." -- Margaret Trimer-Hartley

Greetings Families!

Powerful relationships are the heart of what makes UPSM a great learning community. Indeed, community is the heart that will pump life into our school.

I’m Margaret Trimer-Hartley, your superintendent. I come to you with many years of experience in education, but in some very different roles. The first decade of my career I worked as an education reporter for The Detroit Free Press; the second decade I worked as the Director of Communications for the Michigan Education Association (MEA) advocating for teachers and students. I am now engaged in the richest experience of my professional life— leading the creation of the UPSM system of schools in Detroit. I love getting to know the parents and students who make up our school family.

That passion is precisely what motivated me to join the University Prep family of innovative schools in January 2007. I see very clearly that the global economy has little to offer those without a great education—and a lot of it. If you’re not convinced read, “The World is Flat,” by Thomas Friedman. That book awakened me to the reality of the economic revolution we are experiencing and the urgency of preparing our children—and ourselves—to thrive in this rapidly changing new world.

I believe the strength of our interactions and decisions as a school family will come from our commitment to build a community in which we trust one another, share openly what is important to us, what motivates us, what challenges us.