Speakers
Preconference Leadership Reception Speakers
Arne Duncan
U.S. Secretary of Education
Arne Duncan was nominated to be secretary of education by President-elect Barack Obama and was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, 2009. In his confirmation
hearings, Duncan called education "the most pressing issue facing America," adding that "preparing young people for success in life is not just a moral obligation of society" but also
an "economic imperative." "Education is also the civil rights issue of our generation," he said, "the only sure path out of poverty and the only way to achieve a more equal and just
society." Duncan expressed his commitment to work under the leadership of President Obama and with all those involved in education "to enhance education in America, to lift our
children and families out of poverty, to help our students learn to contribute to the civility of our great American democracy, and to strengthen our economy by producing a workforce
that can make us as competitive as possible."
Prior to his appointment as secretary of education, Duncan served as the chief executive officer of the Chicago Public Schools, a position to which he was appointed by Mayor Richard
M. Daley, from June 2001 through December 2008, becoming the longest-serving big-city education superintendent in the country.
As CEO, Duncan's mandate was to raise education standards and performance, improve teacher and principal quality, and increase learning options. In seven and a half years, he united
education reformers, teachers, principals, and business stakeholders behind an aggressive education reform agenda that included opening over 100 new schools, expanding after-school
and summer learning programs, closing down underperforming schools, increasing early childhood and college access, dramatically boosting the caliber of teachers, and building
public-private partnerships around a variety of education initiatives.
Among his most significant accomplishments during his tenure as CEO, an all-time high of 66.7% of the district's elementary school students met or exceeded state reading standards,
and their math scores also reached a record high, with 70.6% meeting or exceeding the state's standards. At high schools, Chicago Public School students posted gains on the ACT at
three times the rate of national gains and nearly twice that of the state's. Also, the number of CPS high school students taking Advanced Placement courses tripled and the number of
students passing AP classes more than doubled. Duncan has increased graduation rates and boosted the total number of college scholarships secured by CPS students to $157 million.
Prior to joining the Chicago Public Schools, Duncan ran the non-profit education foundation Ariel Education Initiative from 1992 to 1998, which helped fund a college education for a
class of inner-city children under the "I Have A Dream" Foundation. He was part of a team that later started a new public elementary school built around a financial literacy
curriculum, the Ariel Community Academy, which today ranks among the top elementary schools in Chicago.
Duncan graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1987, majoring in sociology. He was co-captain of Harvard's basketball team and was named a first team Academic
All-American. He credits basketball with his team-oriented and highly disciplined work ethic.
Hilary Pennington
Director, Special Initiatives United States Program
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Hilary Pennington, director of
Special Initiatives in the United States Program for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, leads the foundation’s Postsecondary Education initiative as well as efforts around
one-time opportunities to respond to unique challenges and unanticipated events in the United States.
Ms. Pennington most recently served as a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank, and as vice-chair of Jobs for the Future (JFF), a research and
policy development organization that she co-founded. In her twenty-two years as president and CEO of JFF, Ms. Pennington helped the organization become one of the most
influential in the country on issues of education, youth transitions, workforce development, and future work requirements. She played a leading role in the development of Early
College high schools while at JFF. Ms. Pennington served on the Presidential Transition Team for the first Clinton administration and as co-chair of a Presidential Advisory Committee
on using technology to expand training opportunities.
Ms. Pennington is a graduate of the Yale School of Management and Yale College. She holds a graduate degree in social anthropology from Oxford University and was a fellow at the
Harvard Kennedy School of Government in 2000.
Conference Speakers
Molly Corbett Broad
President
American Council on Education
A leading spokesperson for American higher education, Molly Corbett Broad became the twelfth president of the American Council on Education (ACE) on May 1, 2008. She is the first
woman to lead the organization since its founding in 1918. Broad came to ACE from the University of North Carolina where she served as president from 1997 to 2006, leading UNC through
a period of unprecedented enrollment growth. Due in large part to the success of the Focused Growth Initiative, minority enrollment at UNC grew at more than double the rate of the
overall student body during her tenure. She also spearheaded the creation of a need-based financial aid program for in-state undergraduates and the creation of the College Foundation
of North Carolina.
Broad held a number of administrative and executive positions at several universities prior to her tenure at UNC. In the California State University system, she served as senior
vice chancellor for administration and finance from 1992 to 1993, and as executive vice chancellor and chief operating officer from 1993 until her election as UNC president. Earlier
in her career, Broad served as the chief executive officer for Arizona’s three-campus university system from 1985 to 1992 and in a succession of administrative posts at Syracuse
University from 1971 to 1985.
She has written and spoken widely on strategic planning for higher education, K–16 partnerships, information technology, globalization and biotechnology. She currently holds
seats on the boards of PBS (Public Broadcasting Service) and the Parsons Corporation. She is past chair of the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges
(NASULGC), past chair of the Internet 2 board of trustees and past president of the International Council for Distance Education. She has also served on the boards and executive
committees of the Business-Higher Education Forum; Council on Competitiveness; National Association of University System Heads; and the Centenary Committee for Fudan University in
Shanghai, China.
Broad earned a General Motors Scholarship to Syracuse University, where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a baccalaureate degree in economics from the Maxwell School of Citizenship
and Public Affairs. She holds a master’s degree in the field from The Ohio State University.
Patrick M. Callan
President
National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education
Patrick M. Callan is founding president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education. Established in 1998 by a consortium of national foundations, including Atlantic
Philanthropies, the Pew Charitable Trusts, and the Ford Foundation, the National Center is best known for its Measuring Up report cards that evaluate, compare, and grade
state higher education performance in higher education up to and including the baccalaureate degree. These reports are issued every two years and take into account education provided
by both public and private two- and four-year colleges and universities. It has received extensive national and state media coverage, as have other National Center reports on such
subjects as college access and affordability. From 1992 through 1997, Callan was executive director of the California Higher Education Policy Center. The California Center was
recognized for its tough-minded analyses and for calling public attention to important higher education issues.
Prior to leading the California and the National Centers, Callan was vice president of the Education Commission of the States and served as executive director of the California
Postsecondary Education Commission, the Washington State Council for Postsecondary Education, and the Montana Commission on Postsecondary Education. He has been a member of
numerous national, regional, and state commissions and has written and spoken extensively on education and public policy.
Callan is the author of many articles and papers on education, educational opportunity, public accountability, financing of higher education, and leadership. He is co-editor of
Public and Private Financing of Higher Education: Shaping Public Policy for the Future (1997) and co-author of Designing State Higher Education Systems For a New
Century (2001), a study of state organization and governance of higher education. In 2001, he collaborated with Gene Maeroff and Michael Usdan on The Learning Connection: New
Partnerships Between Schools and Colleges, published by Teachers College Press. He has also served as an advisor to blue ribbon commissions, state education and higher education
boards, governors' offices, and legislative committees in many states.
Judith S. Eaton
President
Council for Higher Education Accreditation
Dr. Judith S. Eaton has been
president of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) since 1997. She is accountable to a twenty-person board of directors that represents the 3,000 degree-granting
colleges and universities that are institutional members of CHEA.
As its first permanent president, Eaton has provided CHEA with strong, strategic, and dependable leadership. She has worked diligently to make CHEA a leading national authority on
U.S. accreditation policy and practice, providing easily accessible, reliable, and comprehensive information not only about accreditation, but also about the many thousands of
accredited institutions and programs in the United States. In the past ten years, CHEA has emerged as a compelling national and international voice and advocate for accreditation and
self-regulation.
Under Eaton's leadership during the past decade, CHEA has moved quickly to identify and frame the difficult challenges confronting accreditation, including attending to the rapid
expansion of distance learning, the growing and insistent calls for greater accountability in higher education, the persistent pressure to further address transfer of credit and the
increasingly internationalized demands on accreditation. CHEA is viewed as a valued and vital organization by college and university presidents, accreditors, and policy makers, as
well as international governments and higher education leaders.
Prior to her work at CHEA, Eaton served as chancellor of the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities, where she was responsible for leadership and coordination of thirty-two
institutions serving more than 160,000 students statewide. Other previous positions include the presidencies of the Council for Aid to Education, Community College of Philadelphia,
and the Community College of Southern Nevada, as well as a vice presidency of the American Council on Education. She also has held full- and part-time teaching positions at Wayne
State University, Columbia University, and the University of Michigan.
Eaton currently serves on a range of boards and has authored numerous books and articles on many higher education and accreditation topics. She is often asked to speak on higher
education issues, both in the United States and internationally.
Jamie P. Merisotis
President and CEO
Lumina Foundation for Education
Long a champion of the idea that higher
education enhances both society and individuals, Merisotis has worked for decades to increase educational opportunity among low-income, minority, and other historically
underrepresented populations. At Lumina, Merisotis is continuing that effort by employing a strategic, outcomes-based approach in pursuing the Foundation's mission of expanding
college access and success. Under his leadership, Lumina has embraced an ambitious and specific goal: to ensure that, by 2025, sixty percent of Americans have high-quality
two-year or four-year degrees—up from the current level of thirty-nine percent. His aim is that all of Lumina's efforts and activities—communication, grant making, evaluation,
policy advocacy, and convening—work toward achieving that goal.
Merisotis is an expert on a wide range of higher-education issues. He is well versed in domestic and international issues related to higher-education opportunity and access, including
student financial aid, minority-serving colleges and universities, global higher-education policy strategies, and social and economic benefits of higher education. He is recognized as
an authority on college and university financing and has published major studies and reports on topics ranging from higher-education rankings to technology-based learning.
Before joining Lumina Foundation on January 1, 2008 as President and CEO, Merisotis was founding president of the Institute for Higher Education Policy. Founded in Washington, D.C.,
in 1993, IHEP is an independent, non-partisan organization regarded as one of the world's premier higher-education research and policy centers. While at IHEP, Merisotis helped
establish the Alliance for Equity in Higher Education, an unprecedented coalition of national associations whose members represent more than 350 minority-serving institutions,
including historically black colleges and universities, tribal colleges and universities, and Hispanic-serving institutions.
Prior to founding IHEP, Merisotis had served as executive director of the National Commission on Responsibilities for Financing Postsecondary Education, a bipartisan commission
appointed by the U.S. president and congressional leaders. He authored the commission's final report, Making College Affordable Again, and many of the commission's
recommendations became national policy during the 1990s. Merisotis also helped create the Corporation for National and Community Service (AmeriCorps), serving as an advisor to senior
management on issues related to the quality and effectiveness of national-service initiatives.
Merisotis has received numerous awards and honors, including the 2002 Robert P. Huff Golden Quill Award from the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, and the
2001 Community College Government Relations Award presented by the American Association of Community Colleges and the Association of Community College Trustees. He was a 2005 finalist
for the Brock International Prize in Education, and in 1998 he was named by Change magazine as one of the top young leaders (under the age of 45) in American higher education.
Edward G. Rendell
Governor
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
Edward G. Rendell,
Pennsylvania’s forty-fifth governor, began a second term of office on January 16, 2007, following a landslide re-election victory. As governor, Rendell serves as chief executive
of the nation’s sixth-most-populous state and oversees a $28.3 billion budget.
Governor Rendell’s unprecedented strategic investments have energized Pennsylvania’s economy, revitalized communities, improved education, protected the environment, and expanded
access to health care to all children and affordable prescription drugs for older adults. He championed and signed into law Pennsylvania’s first comprehensive measure to substantially
reform the local tax system by providing urgently needed property tax relief to homeowners. In 2008–09, taxpayers will save nearly $800 million in the first year of statewide property
tax relief from gaming revenues.
Rendell is building on his efforts to make government more responsible to the public and more responsive to the public’s needs. He has annually cut wasteful spending and improved
efficiency to save more than $1 billion and is pursuing a legislative agenda that includes commonsense political reforms to put progress ahead of partisanship.
Under Rendell’s leadership, Pennsylvania’s economy rebounded sharply. His economic stimulus plan is investing more than $2.8 billion to create new jobs and revitalize communities.
Pennsylvania’s unemployment rate continues to be better than, or on par with, the national average. To ensure that all Pennsylvanians share in the benefits of our growing economy,
Rendell successfully championed the first minimum wage increase in nearly a decade.
Under Rendell, student achievement is on the rise at every grade level and in every subject. Pennsylvania’s public schools now have the resources to invest in proven education
initiatives like pre-kindergarten, full-day kindergarten, and tutoring. Pennsylvania has gone from one of the nine states in the country that failed to fund pre-kindergarten to a
national leader in early childhood investment, and, for the first time ever, more than half of Pennsylvania kindergartners are in full-day programs.
Rendell, who served as general chair of the Democratic National Committee during the 2000 Presidential election, has always been active in the community through a variety of
memberships on boards, and also teaches government and politics courses at the University of Pennsylvania. An Army veteran, Rendell is a graduate of the University of
Pennsylvania (B.A. 1965) and Villanova Law School (J.D. 1968).
Patrick T. Terenzini
Distinguished Professor of Education, Higher Education Program and Senior Scientist
Center for the Study of Higher Education, Penn State
Dr. Patrick Terenzini's research examines
the effects of college on student learning and development, persistence, and educational attainment. He has received research grants totaling more than $13 million from such
organizations as the National Science Foundation, the Department of Education, the Lumina Foundation for Education, the Sloan Foundation, and the Spencer Foundation.
Terenzini co-authored the two-volume How College Affects Students (Jossey-Bass, 1991 and 2005) with Ernest T. Pascarella, an award-winning synthesis of thirty years
of research on the impacts of the college experience on students. The first volume was selected as "one of the 100 most important and influential books about U.S. colleges and
universities published in the twentieth century." Terenzini has also published more than 130 articles in refereed journals and made more than 250 presentations at scholarly and
professional conferences. He is a former editor-in-chief of New Directions for Institutional Research, associate editor of Higher Education: Handbook of Theory and
Research, and editorial board member for The Review of Higher Education. He has been a consulting editor for Research in Higher Education for thirty years.
Dr. Terenzini has received the research awards of the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE), the Association for Institutional Research (AIR), the American College
Personnel Association (ACPA), the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA), and the student affairs associations of the states of New York and Pennsylvania. He
is a three-time winner of the Forum Best Paper Award from the Association for Institutional Research and received the William Elgin Wickenden Award from the American Society for
Engineering Education for the best paper published in the Journal of Engineering Education in 2001.
Most recently, Dr. Terenzini was named the first recipient of the Sphere of Influence Award, given jointly by ACPA and NASPA, an award to be given only once each decade. Dr. Terenzini
is also a trustee of Dean College (MA) and a past president of the Association for the Study of Higher Education.
Dr. Gerald L. Zahorchak
Secretary of Education
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
Dr. Gerald L. Zahorchak was nominated
by Governor Edward G. Rendell to serve as Secretary of Education on October 5, 2005 and unanimously confirmed by the Senate of Pennsylvania on February 7, 2006.
Prior to his nomination, Dr. Zahorchak served as Deputy Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education where he was responsible for the education of more than 1.8 million school
children in the Commonwealth. As Deputy Secretary, he worked diligently on the development and implementation of support systems for public schools that are working to meet the high
demands set by Pennsylvania and No Child Left Behind targets.
Dr. Zahorchak has managed an unprecedented expenditure of educational state funding that included $200 million in Accountability Block Grants that were used for tutoring, math, and
literacy coaching, the expansion of full-day kindergarten, and the creation of pre-kindergarten classes. He has led the development of Pennsylvania’s Inspired Leadership
Initiative which develops and supports the state’s educational leaders. He has directed Pennsylvania’s leading role with the Council’s Center for Data Driven Reform in Education
initiative. Dr. Zahorchak has also played a prominent role in the Mid-Atlantic Laboratory for Student Success which leads the way for inspired leadership in six states.
He has worked with Gov. Edward G. Rendell to make key investments in early childhood education. Before Gov. Rendell took office, Pennsylvania was one of only nine states that failed
to fund pre-K. Today, Pennsylvania is a leader in early childhood education investment.
Dr. Zahorchak also has presided over progressive initiatives such as Classrooms for the Future, which will transform teaching and learning by equipping high schools with laptop
computers on every student desk in English, math, science, and history classrooms, and “Science: It’s Elementary,” a program to upgrade science education in elementary schools.
He has helped craft high school reform initiatives that are allowing an ever-growing number of high school students to take challenging courses in a small-school environment that will
prepare them for post-secondary success.
Funding for the state’s public libraries has reached record levels under his leadership.
Dr. Zahorchak has been widely published, and is a frequent speaker at numerous national educational conferences, symposia, and other forums. He is a frequent guest on
Pennsylvania public television and radio stations.
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