Search Begun for New Education Dean

President Drew Faust has established the advisory committee for the search to identify the successor to Kathleen McCartney, departing dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE). McCartney will become president of Smith College on July 1.

According to Faust’s announcement, the committee comprises nine HGSE senior faculty members (Monica Higgins, Nancy Hill, Thomas Kane, Robert Kegan, Nonie Lesaux, Bridget Terry Long, Richard Murnane, Jack Shonkoff, and Hiro Yoshikawa) and professors from other schools with perspectives on HGSE’s work and mission: Christopher Avery (Kennedy School), Amy Edmondson (Business School), Jennifer Hochschild (Faculty of Arts and Sciences, department of government), Lawrence Katz (FAS, department of economics), and Herman (Dutch) Leonard (Business School/Kennedy School). This multidisciplinary, multischool perspective fits well with McCartney’s overhaul of HGSE’s academic doctoral program along three tracks (human development; culture, society, and institutions; and policy and program evaluation) closely aligned with other fields (respectively: psychology, sociology, and economics).

Faust wrote that she and University provost Alan Garber would reach out to faculty members, students, staff, alumni, and others to solicit information about HGSE’s challenges and opportunities, and to identify decanal candidates. Observations and nominations can be sent, in confidence, to gsesearch@harvard.edu.