I spent eighteen months as a full-time professor and Executive Resident at Carnegie Mellon’s Heinz College. I taught five master’s level courses addressing leadership, managing change, education policy, and the future of learning. I continue to be affiliated with the university as an adjunct member of the faculty.

The course I continue to teach today is called Societal Consequences of Technological Change: Education. It is part of a series of micro courses exploring the potential impact of technological change on society, how its benefits and costs might be distributed and what we should be doing today. This pioneering course became a model that has since been applied to transportation and other fields, and I return to teach it again each winter. 

My courses also include:

  • Policy and Leadership in Public Education explores the essentials of public education in the United States – from history and governance to contemporary issues and approaches to leading change.
  • The Future of Learning and Education Policy focuses on the promise and perils of personalized learning, frontiers in school design, and the impact of technology in and beyond the classroom. 
  • My Education Policy Workshop, which focuses on the process of leading change in challenging environments and developing the skills to take a big idea from start to finish.

These four short recordings are used in my courses to give students a quick briefing on the basics of K-12 public education in the United States: The Purpose of Public Education is Contested; The System is Highly Decentralized; How Well the System is Doing Depends on Who You Ask; and Improving Our Schools is a Serious Management Challenge.

My own academic background is in political science, public policy, and management. I tend to look at and understand our education system through that lens, and believe that understanding its basic governance features, political realities, and philosophical underpinnings is essential to being able to manage change effectively.