About
I first began thinking about what shapes education in third grade, when I was sent to the principal’s office for asking why our lesson on Columbus left out all of the people his expedition killed. Later, I went to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst to prepare to be a history teacher so I could learn how to teach in the ways my eight-year-old self had needed. But my history and education courses had assumptions embedded in them that made me deeply uncomfortable.
The more I learned, the more I came to believe that the best way I could contribute to education was by working to make American higher education better – not only through teaching and research, but also by helping institutional leaders make more informed and thoughtful decisions.
I am a historian of American higher education who studies how universities construct identity and legitimacy. My book project, a comparative history of the graduate schools of education at Harvard, Penn, and Teachers College, argues that academic prestige is only one of several paths to durable institutional success; schools have built lasting identities around research, regional influence, and practitioner training. I bring an unusual second vantage point to these questions: I have advised presidents and senior leaders at 35 selective colleges and universities as Assistant Director of Research at COFHE, designed shared-governance structures across Harvard’s schools, and currently lead strategic analysis for university decision-making at Harvard. I hold a PhD from Harvard and have taught courses at Brown, Harvard, and the University of Michigan.
Scholarship
My dissertation and book project examine how graduate schools of education construct institutional identity and legitimacy — and what that reveals about higher education more broadly.
Advising
I advise university leaders on institutional identity, strategy, and governance, drawing on the same questions I study as a historian.
Teaching
I’ve taught the history of American higher education to undergraduates, master’s students, and PhD students at Brown, Harvard, and the University of Michigan.