‘Mr. Highland’: Celebrated Highland High teacher, counselor Dean Collett dies at 94

When the newly built Highland High School opened its doors on the east side of Salt Lake City in 1956, Dean Collett was there — starting his teaching career at a salary that he later recalled was just $2,750 a year.

He would stay for almost the rest of his life, teaching, counseling and inspiring generations of Highland students until his retirement in 2021. As the school named the Collett Commons in his honor in March 2022, graduates dating back to the 1960s returned to share stories of his continuing care for them, reported student journalist Claire Sophie Malinka-Thompson.

That community is now grieving, as Highland announced in a Facebook post that Collett died June 13. The school held a memorial for him on June 23 at its football stadium.

“A teacher, counselor, mentor and friend, he touched the lives of so many,” the Highland post said. “His influence, guidance, example and friendship go far beyond the classroom. His presence will be missed beyond words.”

Collett had a brief retirement, leaving his counseling post and the school in 2007. But he returned in April 2008 as a student advocate and served in that role until April 30, 2021.

He saw Highland transform over his career: From a neighborhood institution with few minority students; to a diverse high school that welcomed teens from across the city in the 1980s after district enrollment dropped, South High closed and attendance boundaries changed; to recent conversations about whether its aging building should be torn down.

Issues Collett raised as a Highland school counselor in the 1990s are being debated again today: Should students on the west side of the city be able to attend a high school in their neighborhood? And the district is once again dealing with declining enrollment, with school board members weighing whether to propose expensive rebuilds of Highland and West High.

An educator and advocate

Born in 1928, Collett grew up in Salt Lake City with five siblings, he told oral history interviewer Fred Buchanan in April 1992. Collett’s father was a banker who eventually lost his job in the later years of the Depression.

“So we, as children, had to work most all of our lives, however we could, starting as a paper boy, doing yard work for neighbors in the area,” Collett remembered. “I worked at a grocery store for all my years going through junior and senior high school for ten cents an hour, but enough to help bring food into the home.”

In June 1945, he graduated from East High School at 16, then studied for two years at the University of Utah before serving a three-year mission in Sweden for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He started back at the U. when he returned in 1950, then left school again for military service in Germany during the Korean War.

He finished at the U. when he returned, graduating with a teaching certificate in 1956, first teaching math, then adding German, and then, with national interest in the language spurred by the success of Sputnik, taught Russian — although he didn’t speak it.

“I couldn’t speak a thing,” he remembered. “I went to school that summer and began the basics. ... I would go to school at night for three hours. Then I would teach it the next morning at school. That is how my Russian experience began.”

He later took an intensive course and ended up teaching Russian for 15 years.

Collett shifted to working as a counselor in the 1978-79 school year, he said, and found students were more open to counseling than they had been in years past, as they struggled with academics and changing family dynamics.

He had seen Highland shift away from having “compact” boundaries in an affluent neighborhood, with few minority students, he said. After South High School closed in 1988, boundaries for West, East and Highland were changed to spread its students across the three schools, which made Highland more diverse.

That richness strengthened the school, he told The Salt Lake Tribune, reminiscing in 2016. But speaking with Buchanan before that in 1992, Collett said he wasn’t sure how well the boundaries were serving students from the west side.

“For example, Highland has I think 8 to 12 bus loads of kids who come every morning at 7:00. They come across the entire valley,” he said.

“They have to leave at 2:15. So we are denying them an opportunity to become a part of the school and participate in the activities that take place after school or in the evenings, because most of them come from an area where there isn’t much money. They can’t afford to take public transportation to come to the functions in the evening,” he added. “So they don’t feel that they are a part of a school. They go here. They come to learn, but they can’t participate.”

He gave, as an example, a Hispanic student who had come to him that afternoon. Many of the boy’s friends from Glendale were attending West High, Collett said. “His comment was, ‘I have never felt SO stressed out as I do here at Highland. ... I don’t feel like I belong. ... I always felt good before, but I have nothing to become a part of.’”

This same critique is echoing today — in calls from parents, former students and others for a new high school on the west side of Salt Lake City.

[Read more: Are Salt Lake City taxpayers ready to support three new high schools?]

‘Once a Ram, always a Ram’

Beyond being an educator and an advocate for students, Collett was the embodiment of Highland High School to many — including Katie Ieremia, a Class of 1994 graduate.

“Lots of people called him ‘Mr. Highland,’” said Ieremia, who is now a Salt Lake City School District administrator. “He is Highland.”

Ieremia recalled a moment in high school when she had to prepare a presentation during her art history class. As a shy, reserved student, she was nervous, and she went to Collett for advice. Not only was Collett able to ease her nerves, he told Ieremia that she would make a great teacher.

“I’m not sure how many people he ever said that to, but that really changed my life. His encouragement made me want to go into education,” said Ieremia, who ended up teaching and becoming an assistant principal at Highland for about 20 years. “When I finally got the job, he was my very first phone call.”

One of the biggest lessons Ieremia learned from Collett, she said, was to always remember the school and the people who shaped her, to be kind, and to “always err on the side of the student, to always err on the side of being more patient or loving or gentle.”

“There’s a saying that he would always say, and it was, ‘Once a Ram, always a Ram,’” she said. “‘Highland is who made you and so wherever you move, whatever you do, don’t forget that.’”

He was a “legend” in the community despite hating attention, said Ieremia. “He was always a humble man.”

Ieremia said once, when she was getting lunch with Collett at Millie’s Burgers on 2100 South in Sugar House, passing drivers honked their horns and people came up to say hello to Collett as they sat outside.

“Everybody was drawn towards him. They wanted to be near him, to feel his spirit,” she said. “You felt encouraged and renewed by just being around him.”

That love was reflected in the many comments on Highland’s Facebook post. Many commenters remembered Collett as selfless and always there for the students. Some mentioned stories similar to Ieremia’s — how Collett inspired them to become counselors and educators. One writer said they named a son after Collett, as a way of honoring his impact on their life.

“I cannot think of Highland High and not visualize Dean Collett in its hallways,” one commenter wrote. “His kindness, his encouragement and example touched the lives of so many when they needed it most.”

While Collett never married, Ieremia said, all of the 30,000 or more students he ever interacted with were his children.

“Everybody had something to learn from Dean, and if you paid attention, it made you so much of a better person to know him,” she said. “And I think that’s his legacy, that you were so much better of a person just to be around him.”

Collett had said himself that his goal as an educator was to make students not just better citizens, but better people. He told Buchanan in the 1992 interview that he felt that his responsibility was not only to be there for the students when they need him, but also show them that he cares.

And Collett said he would do it all again

“I would jump into it just as far as I did,” Collett told Buchanan. “It has been the most rewarding thing in my life, most rewarding. ... There is nothing more gratifying [than] to have a student whom you’ve taught 30 years ago come back and remember you for something you may have given him or her.”

Correction • 8:30 a.m. June 16, 2023: This story has been updated to reflect Collett’s correct age. It was also updated at 11:33 a.m. to reflect the correct spelling of Katie Ieremia’s name.