 In the 1950s he studied at St Peter's College, Oxford, where he was awarded a diploma in public and social administration with distinction and won a Fulbright Scholarship to Harvard in his second year (1954), becoming a friend of the future Senator Ted Kennedy.From 1940 to 1948 Dormand worked as a teacher in the coal mining community of Easington, teaching at Hordern Modern School and his old school, now renamed Wellfield A.J.Dawson Grammar School.