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 John D. Bransford Anthony Bryk Cynthia E. Coburn Tom Corcoran Louis M. Gomez Diana Lam Frederic A. Mosher Nancy Owen Charla Rolland Mary Kay Stein Deborah Stipek Janet Weiss Nancy Pinkerton |
Home > Members  Members Biographies January 27-28, 2005 Conference in Phoenix , Arizona Core Group John D. Bransford is James W. Mifflin University Professorship and Professor of Education at the University of Washington. Early work by Bransford and his colleagues in the 1970s included research in the areas of human learning, memory and problem solving, and helped shape the "cognitive revolution" in Psychology. Bransford has also worked with colleagues to develop a number of award-winning software products involving literacy, mathematics and science. An author of nine books, over 200 articles and hundreds of presentations, Bransford is an internationally renowned scholar in the areas of cognition and technology. He was awarded the Sutherland Prize for Research at Vanderbilt University, and was Co-chair of two National Academy of Science Committees that produced How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience & School (1999) and How People Learn, Bridging Research and Practice (1999). Bransford has been elected to the National Academy of Education. Anthony Bryk has just accepted the Spencer Chair in Organizational Studies in the School of Education and the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. His main areas of expertise are school organization, education reform, information infrastructure systems and educational statistics. Formerly, he held the Marshall Field IV Chair in Urban Education and Sociology at the University of Chicago. He was the founding director of the Center for Urban School Improvement at the University of Chicago which supports reform efforts within the Chicago Public Schools. Through the Center, he also initiated the city’s first professional development charter school in the North Kenwood Oakland neighbors of Chicago. This Center has now become the support base for an expansive new school development effort citywide. Professor Bryk was also the founding director of the Consortium on Chicago School Research which has pioneered efforts at informing urban school reform through intensive empirical analysis of the conditions of education in Chicago and the progress of the school improvement efforts. Cynthia E. Coburn is Assistant Professor in Policy, Organization, Management, and Evaluation at the Graduate School of Education, University of California at Berkeley. Her research brings the tools of organizational sociology to understand the relationship between instructional policy and teachers’ classroom practices in urban schools. She has studied these issues in the context of state and national reading policy, attempts to scale-up innovative school reform programs, and district-wide professional development initiatives. Coburn received her MA in Sociology and PhD in Education from Stanford University. She was the recipient of a Spencer Foundation national dissertation fellowship in 1999 and won the 2002 Dissertation Award from Division L (policy and politics) of the American Educational Research Association. Recent work has been published in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Educational Researcher, Sociology of Education, and Educational Policy. < top Tom Corcoran is Co-Director of the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) at the University of Pennsylvania. In between periods of service with state and federal agencies, he has conducted research on implementation and effects of state- and district-initiated reforms, workplace conditions and reforms in schools, school restructuring and school-site management, state policies for professional development, reform of math and science education, and the diffusion and use of knowledge in public education. Mr. Corcoran leads CPRE’s evaluations of the National Center for Education and the Economy’s new middle and high school designs. He is co-directing an assessment of state teacher policies for the Carnegie Corporation of New York . He also co-directs CPRE’s technical assistance to the Merck Institute for Science Education, the El Paso Collaborative, and the International Baccalaureate Program. Mr. Corcoran serves on the MacArthur Foundation’s Teaching and Learning Network, the Annenberg Institute’s Advisory Panel and its national District Task Force, the New Jersey Commissioner of Education’s Abbott Advisory Committee, and the Research Committee of the International Baccalaureate Program. He also serves on the boards of directors of the Education Law Center of Newark, NJ, the Public Education Institute of NJ, and the NJ Math Coalition. Mr. Corcoran served as Policy Advisor for Education for Governor Jim Florio of New Jersey . Prior to joining the Governor's staff in 1990, he worked with state education agencies, education associations, and national foundations on school reform and children's issues. From 1980 to 1986, he directed the School Improvement Program at Research for Better Schools, the Mid-Atlantic Regional Laboratory located in Philadelphia , PA. From 1976-1980, he served as Director of Evaluation and Executive assistant to the Commissioner of Education in New Jersey . Prior to that, he served as a program officer at the Fund for Improvement of Postsecondary Education where he dealt with professional education, and from 1969-1974 was a Senior Fellow at the Educational Policy Research Center at Syracuse University . Louis M. Gomez is Aon Professor of Learning Sciences and Professor of Computer Science at Northwestern University . Professor Gomez' primary interest is in working with school communities to will bring the current state-of-the-art in computing and networking technologies into pervasive use in schools so that they will integrally support science and other curriculum. He has worked to create curriculum that supports school reform while connecting schools to broad communities of practice beyond school. Prior to joining the Faculty at Northwestern Professor Gomez was director of Human-Computer Systems Research at Bellcore in Morristown New Jersey . At Bellcore, Professor Gomez pursued an active research programs investigating techniques that improve human use of information retrieval systems and techniques which aid in the acquisition of complex computer-based skills. Professor Gomez received a B.A. in Psychology from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and a Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology from the University of California at Berkeley . < top Diana Lam is a true visionary with sophisticated first hand knowledge of education policy and change. She has a strong national reputation for possessing an unrelenting focus on teaching and learning. She is currently the Distinguished Practitioner-In-Residence at Teachers College at Columbia University. Most recently she was the Deputy Chancellor for Teaching and Learning at the New York City Department of Education. Ms. Lam was responsible for joint implementation of Children First reforms: a multi-year effort aimed at dramatically improving New York City Public Schools. Ms.Lam is committed to working with others to create a system of schools where effective teaching and learning is a reality for every child. She also served as Superintendent for Providence Public Schools. In Providence , Ms. Lam overhauled the administration, implemented a citywide literacy initiative, redesigned high schools and worked closely with the community in the development of a five year strategic plan that has already produced significant results. Prior to her tenure in Providence, Ms. Lam was the first female superintendent in San Antonio , Texas where she won national acclaim for her accomplishments, including a dramatic increase in student achievement. In 1994 when Ms. Lam first came to San Antonio , it was the worst performing school district in Texas, with 42 schools rated as “low-performing” by the state. By 1999, none received that rating, and student scores increased dramatically in all subject areas. Ms. Lam has also served as superintendent in Dubuque, Iowa and Chelsea, Massachusetts, where she worked to eliminate tracking by race and gender, thus ensuring all students equal access to a good education. Diana Lam understands what it means to live up to the credo of “success for all children.” In the four communities where she has served as superintendent, she has envisioned the changes required and put in place the structures that allow educators and families to work together to reach new levels of achievement. Frederic A. (Fritz) Mosher is an independent consultant on education policy and research planning, management, and funding. He is Senior Consultant to the Consortium on Policy Research in Education (CPRE - University of Pennsylvania ) for dissemination and outreach. He recently has also been a Senior Advisor to the Spencer Foundation and a RAND Corporation Adjunct Staff member, working with RAND 's project, supported by the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, to examine ways in which OERI might improve the quality and relevance of the education research it funds. He has been an advisor to the Assistant Secretary for Research and Improvement in the United States Department of Education and to Achieve, Inc. In 1998, he retired from Carnegie Corporation of New York (a philanthropic foundation) after 36 years as a program specialist and policy analyst. Over that time he worked in the full range of the Corporation's programs, including international affairs; U.S. governmental reform; education at all levels; and the role of universities in the planning and development of national education systems in Anglophone Africa. In the 1970's, along with Vivien Stewart, he developed Carnegie's initial program in the reform of public education; and in the 1980's and early 90's, under the leadership of David Hamburg, he chaired the Corporation's program on Avoiding Nuclear War (later Cooperative Security), which dealt extensively with U.S.-Soviet relations. In recent years he returned to a focus on the policy issues involved in transforming the U.S. public education system into one that would enable substantially all students to reach high standards of achievement. He is a cognitive/social psychologist by training, with a Ph.D. from Harvard University. < top
Nancy Owen is a Fellow of the Institute for Learning at the University of Pittsburgh.The Institute for Learning is a partnership of school districts committed to standards-based education and system-wide reform. Her work helps bridge the domains of research and practice by conveying to educators the best of current knowledge and research about learning processes and principles of instruction. She is a member of the leadership team and conducts leadership development seminars in Providence Rhode Island and Region 1 in the Bronx , New York. Ms. Owen has recently retired from the Providence School district after 31 years where she was a teacher, reading specialist, and administrator. She was most recently the Principal of The New Feinstein High School in Providence, Rhode Island. Feinstein High School is a performance-based high school that celebrates and respects the talents, characteristic and strengths of each student. Students are held to academically rigorous standards where they are given the opportunity to learn at their own pace and in a manner suited to their own unique abilities. Ms. Owen was Providence ’s first administrator to facilitate a Site-Based Managed School on the elementary level and has successfully gained the designation for Providence ’s first Site-based Managed High School. Ms. Owen has coordinated multiple grants for her school including a Disney Learning Partnership Grant, Comprehensive School Reform Grant, Magnet Schools Grant, Virtual Professional Development Schools Grant and Children’s Crusade Grant in her elementary school. Her high school was recipients of a Carnegie Foundation Grant, New England Small Schools Network Grant, a Perkins Grant and a Rhode Island School to Careers Grant. Ms. Owen was a Mentor Principal and worked with aspiring principals within her district. She has served as a Providence District Fellow for the Institute of Learning with the University of Pittsburgh and has participated in a “Think Tank” funded by the Wallace-Readers Digest Foundation and the Institute for Learning. Charla Rolland recently retired from Stanford where she served as Consulting Associate Professor, Director of Professional Enhancement for the School of Education , and Director of the California School ReDesign Network at Stanford. During this time she taught the course, "Teaching Practicum for Undergraduates." Prior to arriving at Stanford, Dr. Rolland was Associate Professor of Educational Leadership at California State University , Hayward for 5 years. Her previous career highlights also include serving as superintendent of Las Lomitas School District for 10 years, principal in the Fountain Valley School District , assistant principal in the East Wittier School District, and teacher in Chicago and Germany. Dr. Rolland received both her Doctorate of Education and Master’s in Educational Administration from the University of Southern California . < top Mary Kay Stein holds a joint appointment at the University of Pittsburgh as Associate Professor of Administrative and Policy Studies and Research Scientist at the Learning Research and Development Center . One strand of her research focuses on classroom-based teaching and learning with the aim of understanding the nature of effective instructional practices and the conditions that support it. She has developed a framework for examining instructional practice that has served as the lens for several research articles and as an important bridge to practice. The framework has been used in a wide range of professional development settings and has led to the publication of a casebook for teacher professional development (Implementing Standards-Based mathematics Instruction). As an outgrowth of this work, Dr. Stein currently serves as co-director of an NSF-funded project (COMET) aimed at producing and field testing materials for the professional development of middle school teachers of mathematics. A second strand of Dr. Stein’s research focuses on bringing two lines of inquiry that have long been pursued independently—education policy and instruction and learning—into closer interaction. This work is focused on issues of urban education and school districts, asking: “How can leaders of urban districts configure their organizations and develop their institutional cultures to support highly demanding forms of teaching and learning in all classrooms and all schools?” As part of this work, Dr. Stein has studied Community School District #2 in New York City and the San Diego City Schools . Dr. Stein has served on several national panels including the National Academy of Education’s Panel on Strengthening the Capacity of Research to Impact Policy and Practice, the National Institute for Science Education’s Professional Development Project and NCTM’s Standards Impact Research Group (SIRG). In November of 1999, Dr. Stein was elected to a four-year term as School Director for the Riverview School District in Oakmont , Pennsylvania . Deborah Stipek is a Professor and the I. James Quillan Dean at Stanford University’s School of Education.From 1987 to 2000 she was the co-director of a doctoral and post-doctoral program in applied human development at UCLA, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health. In addition, she served as the director UCLA’s laboratory preschool and elementary school (Seeds UES) and of the Urban Education Studies Center for 10 years. Dean Stipek recently chaired the National Research Council Committee for Increasing High School Student’s Engagement and Motivation to Learn. Dean Stipek’s research focuses on student motivation and early childhood education. She is author of two books, one published in its fourth edition by Allyn and Bacon, Motivation to Learn : Integrating Theory and Practice, and a second, Motivated Minds: Raising a Child to Love Learning, published by Holt. She has also written many research and practical articles on the effects of different educational contexts on young children’s motivation and learning. She is currently directing a large, three-site, longitudinal study of very low-income children’s transition to elementary school. All of the children and families in the study were previously involved in a study of the effects of a federal intervention program for children from infancy through the preschool years that was designed to improve child outcomes. She has strong interests in educational and other policies affecting low-income children and families. She spent one year working for U.S. Senator Bill Bradley in the U.S. Senate, and five years on the National Academy of Science’s Board on Children, Youth, and Families. She was also a member of the MacArthur Foundation’s Network on Successful Pathways through Middle Childhood. < top Janet Weiss is Associate Provost for Academic Affairs and the Mary C. Bromage Collegiate Professor of Organizational Behavior and Public Policy. She holds faculty appointments in both the University of Michigan Business School and the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. Professor Weiss has been on the faculty of the University of Michigan since 1983. She has been Associate Provost since May 2002 and has responsibilities for a broad range of academic issues. She was Associate Dean of the Business School between 1992 and 1997, and before that served as Associate Director of the Institute of Public Policy Studies at Michigan (before it became the School of Public Policy ). Before coming to the University of Michigan, she was on the faculty of the School of Organization and Management at Yale University , and affiliated with the Institution of Social and Policy Studies there. Professor Weiss received a Ph.D. from Harvard University in Psychology and Social Relations and a B.A. from Yale University . Professor Weiss is the founder and co-director of the Nonprofit and Public Management Center at the University of Michigan , a collaborative effort of the Schools of Business, Public Policy, and Social Work. This center enriches the curricular offerings of the professional schools in the domain of nonprofit and public management. It also provides a focus for the rich set of volunteer, internship, project, and extracurricular opportunities available to professional degree students, and stimulates research and inquiry in nonprofit and public management among faculty and doctoral students. Weiss' research is focused on public management and public policy. She has published widely in academic journals on the roles of info rmation and ideas in the policy process. She has also done extensive research on the challenges of public management, and the interplay between policy design and the management of public programs. Her work on education policy, in particular, led to her involvement as an expert advisor to a group of major corporations in Michigan seeking to improve the quality of public education in the state. She has also consulted to non-profit and public sector clients at the federal and state levels. She has been active in the Association of Public Policy Analysis and Management, and served on a number of editorial boards. Network Staff Nancy Pinkerton has been the Network Administrator since March 2004. Prior to joining the Network she spent 20 years at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (at Stanford), serving the past 5 years at their Assistant Director. In addition to making all the conference arrangements for the Network, she coordinates the Network’s financial issues involving Stanford, subcontractors, and the MacArthur Foundation. John D. Bransford | Anthony Bryk | Cynthia E. Coburn | Tom Corcoran | Louis M. Gomez | Diana Lam | Frederic A. Mosher| Nancy Owen | Charla Rolland | Mary Kay Stein | Deborah Stipek | Janet Weiss | Nancy Pinkerton |