Accelerate Faculty

Alverno College will honor Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond with the Sister Joel Read Outstanding Educator Award at a ceremony on April 7. The award recognizes educational leaders who have brought significant improvements to education through their leadership, practice and scholarship. The event begins at 5:30 p.m., and includes a reception, dinner and award presentation. It is only the second time anyone has been given this award, and it also happens to coincide with Sr. Joel Read's 90th birthday.

Darling-Hammond is the Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education at Stanford University, where she launched the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education and the School Redesign Network. She served as executive director of the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, a blue-ribbon panel whose report, “What Matters Most: Teaching and America's Future,” was named one of the most influential reports in U.S. education and led to sweeping policy changes affecting teaching and teacher education. She was also named one of the nation's ten most influential people affecting educational policy over the past decade.

The program includes a discussion moderated by Alan Borsuk, Senior Fellow in Law and Public Policy at Marquette University. The conversation, which will include Darling-Hammond and Patricia Luebke, Dean of the School of Education at Alverno, will touch on three themes: How a city like Milwaukee can best prepare teachers for our schools, how schools can build performance-based assessment into their evaluation process, and what major policy issues impacting education the next United States President will need to address.

Read, who served as Alverno College's president for 35 years, has long been recognized as one of the nation's leading educational innovators. Under her leadership, Alverno developed its revolutionary abilities-based curriculum and assessment-as-learning teaching methods, which educators from around the world have studied for over 40 years. The award is named to honor the outstanding contributions Read has made to the field of education.

The winner of the Sister Joel Read Outstanding Educator Award is decided by a national panel of education experts comprised of the following members: • Dr. Patricia Luebke, dean, Alverno College School of Education • Dr. Nancy Athanasiou, professor, Alverno College School of Education • Alan Borsuk, senior fellow in law and public policy, Marquette Law School and education columnist for Milwaukee Journal Sentinel • Ricardo Diaz, executive director, United Community Center and member of the Alverno College Board of Trustees • Dr. Patricia Albjerg Graham, dean and professor emerita, Harvard Graduate School of Education • Dr. Pat Hutchings, senior scholar, National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment • Jamie Merisotis, president, Lumina Foundation • Ellen Moir, founder and CEO, New Teacher Center • Tashia Morgridge, co-founder and president, TOSA Foundation • Mary Staten, incoming director of Clinical Placement, Assessment & Licensing, Alverno College School of Education