Standing Tall

The kindergarten boys and girls sitting in a circle in their Nathaniel Hawthorne Elementary School classroom looked up at the nearly 7-foot young man who came to visit them, their eyes wide, their mouths open. One little boy summoned his courage and asked what they all were thinking.

"Are you a giant?"

"Yes, I am," said the giant.

Then the giant, Tim Miller '93, M'94, M'98, P'25, Ed.D., visiting the class as a teaching intern from Trinity University, carefully folded his lanky frame into a miniature chair and read to the students.

It was the early '90s. Miller, a teaching intern, a humanities major, and a center on Trinity's basketball team, was already establishing himself as a gifted educator and leader. And the giant part? He couldn't have known how prophetic he was. Many years later, it took a giant like Miller, and everything he'd learned at Trinity, in life, and in his career, to help Uvalde, Texas, heal and rebuild after one of the state's most harrowing tragedies.

Miller's road to Trinity had many stops. His father, who worked in sporting goods sales, moved the family from Maryland, where Miller was born, to the Midwest and into the Deep South, and finally to San Antonio, where Miller graduated from Churchill High School.

Education dazzled Miller, and he started down that path early, tutoring classmates and coaching swimming. By middle school, he knew he wanted to be a teacher. After graduating from high school, he knew Trinity would help him become a great one. Trinity's reputation as a school that produced excellent teachers drew Miller in. To lead a classroom, the education department required students to complete a bachelor's degree, then a one-year master's.

The department had, and still has, close relations with many San Antonio schools that gave students opportunities to be in the classroom, and there was a Saturday morning program that brought a small group of elementary students from diverse backgrounds to Trinity's campus. Miller worked with them over a semester, leading educational activities and helping them expand their view of themselves and the world. "It was a great way to put together things I learned about in the classroom," he says.

Miller, always the tallest kid in his class, grew to 6 feet 8 inches. He put his height to use on Trinity's basketball team. In his four-year career as a Tiger, he snatched 112 rebounds, giving his best on a team that won 33 games and lost 67. His 41 blocks in the 1992-93 campaign still rank among the top 10 all-time for a single season at Trinity.

Miller pledged Omega Phi, joined the Student Programming Board, and befriended Christine Supak '95, who played on the tennis team. After graduation, Miller and Supak dated, then married. (Their daughter, Sam, graduated from Trinity in 2025; their son, Zach, will graduate this spring from Texas A&M.) Miller also joined service projects that helped the community, an ethos his parents instilled in him at every city they moved to.

Miller initially planned to combine his love for hoops and teaching as a high school coach. The late John Moore III '60, Ed.D., who chaired the education department at the time, and for nearly 30 years, had a different idea. He convinced Miller to intern at Cambridge Elementary in Alamo Heights, where Miller fell in love with teaching elementary-age children.

"Young children are sponges," Miller says. "They soak up knowledge and take risks to learn more academically, emotionally, and socially. It's an opportune time to build character, encourage curiosity."

Next, Karen Waldron, Ph.D., professor emerita of education, encouraged Miller to work with children with special needs. For his first official job, Miller served as a special education elementary teacher at Nathaniel Hawthorne Academy near downtown San Antonio, where all of the students were eligible for free lunches.

"Trinity does a great job of making sure that people understand the diversity we have in the San Antonio area, which is a very good example of the diversity we have throughout the state of Texas," Miller says. "We got to work with English learners, we got to work with students with special needs, a variety of children and learning styles."

And Miller's education professors Waldron, Moore, and Shari Albright '83, M'86, Ed.D., a former professor and chair of the department, invested time and interest in developing their students.

"I felt very prepared stepping into my first, second, and third years (as a teacher) because of all the work that had been done to develop me as a professional educator," Miller says.

Albright, now a Trinity trustee, says kids found Miller "magical." While Miller's size and gender helped squelch bad behaviors, Albright says, "you still have to be an engaging teacher who knows your stuff and has planned your lessons. Tim had all of those skills and talents and knowledge bases to bring to bear on teaching."

While teaching, Miller returned to Trinity for a master's in educational leadership and a principal certificate. Then he got a doctorate from The University of Texas at Austin and was on the road to becoming a superintendent.

After two years as principal at Eisenhower Middle School in San Antonio's North East ISD, Miller was selected to be the assistant superintendent at Cleburne ISD, south of Fort Worth, Texas, and became superintendent there the next year, turning a low-performing school into a model of excellence. Five school years later, he took a job with the Texas Education Agency, directing teacher preparation across the state.

When asked if he missed the classroom, Miller said he did-when he left the school grounds. But while he was principal or superintendent, he could still walk the halls and visit classrooms and students.

You can imagine Miller in a requisite blazer and tie, walking the halls of his schools, twice as tall as some of his charges, willing to be a giant for anyone who asks.

In 2018, Miller learned that Albright had been named president of the Charles Butt Foundation, which focuses on improving public K-12 education across Texas. Albright and Miller had been principals at different North East ISD schools at the same time, and they worked together when Miller was with the state. "I sent her a congratulatory text, and she texted back, 'Do you want to come work for me?'"

And he did. For three and a half years, Miller reported to his former professor, supporting programming, research, advocacy efforts, and partnerships with Texas universities to improve teacher preparation across the state. In 2021, he began steering a leadership development program, taking principals from across the state to Harvard University for weeklong sessions during the summer to support their professional development.

Then, on May 24, 2022, tragedy struck South Texas. Nineteen children and two teachers were shot to death at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.

"That day in May, it was a horrible shock," Miller says. Other school shootings, in Columbine and Sandy Hook, were troubling, but distant. To hit close to San Antonio, close to Miller's heart, "It really shakes you."

Charles Butt, whose mother had taught in a one-room schoolhouse near Uvalde, wanted to help the community 90 minutes west of San Antonio. The Charles Butt Family and H-E-B Grocery Company donated $10 million to jump-start the construction of a new elementary school there. Charlie Clines, the then CEO of the Charles Butt Foundation, needed a point person to help the community raise more funds and oversee the construction. He and Albright turned to Miller, the former elementary school teacher, turned principal, turned superintendent.

Clines, who's now retired, expected Miller to serve a limited role. Instead, he says, "Tim took over, just embraced the whole community."

Miller's collective experiences-as a Trinity student and an educator-came together in a new role: executive director of the Uvalde CISD Moving Forward Foundation, a coalition of school and community members dedicated to raising funds for a new school. It was a volunteer position, yet Miller worked it like a full-time job, on top of his other full-time job with the Charles Butt Foundation.

Miller drove the 200 miles from his home in Georgetown, Texas, to Uvalde countless times to coordinate with contractors, something he'd done as a superintendent, and meet with the community. He worked with others in the Uvalde foundation to convince suppliers to donate building materials and cash. The fund grew to $60 million, but more important than what Miller did was how he did it.

Clines, who was also the president of the Uvalde CISD Moving Forward Foundation, says Miller led the Uvalde foundation by consensus, meeting with community members, educating them about the possibilities, and building trust and hope. "Tim is just a calming presence wherever he is," Clines says. "He's thoughtful, engaging, and has a very high emotional quotient."

Miller would meet with parents and ask what they wanted and what their children wanted in an elementary school. Since this was the first new elementary school being built in the area since the '50s, Miller took Uvalde community members on field trips to other cities to visit recently built elementary schools so they could understand what the new industry standards had to offer.

Miller doesn't do bombast. He stands out in crowds but doesn't draw attention to himself, and he leans in when he listens. He persuades with a gentle smile. It's easy to see why little kids love him. When he spoke with survivors and victims' families, he led with empathy, Clines says.

"Empathy is a big part of the work I've done and continue to do," Miller says. He listens to understand, "so that as many times as possible the intended and unintended consequences do not do harm but are to the benefit of the people we work for."

And the people embraced him. "Every time I went to Uvalde, I would learn something new or meet someone new or hear a different story about the tragedy," Miller says. "It changes you. Thankfully, it's changed me for the better. Hopefully, the work that we've done in Uvalde, with building the school, will help heal the community as well."

When the new school, Legacy Elementary, opened in October 2025 and Miller saw the children streaming in, oohing and aahing, smiles on their faces and on those of the teachers and principals, he knew his work had paid off.

On a recent trip to Uvalde, Miller too wore a smile as he described how purposeful the community was in choosing Legacy Elementary's colors, designs, and motifs. He greeted teachers with side hugs and contractors with handshakes and gave the school counselor an update on playground equipment that'd been ordered.

A wooden sculpture of a tree stretches up from the middle of an atrium on the school's second floor. From the sturdy trunk grows two large limbs, and from them 19 smaller limbs, representing the two staff members and 19 children who were killed in 2022.

The tree-and the school itself-is more than a physical structure. Legacy Elementary's motto is about letting hope bloom. The tree with its vibrant leaves stands tall, supporting the space where future students will flourish beneath its shade. To build this new school, Miller, like the tree, stood tall to guide this community toward a path of healing.

Ashley Chohlis, former superintendent of Uvalde CISD, quickly buys into the giant metaphor. "Tim is a gentle giant," she says. "He put the work on his shoulders and contributed so much. He's been a giant in the community, just holding us up."