Education researcher will deliver commencement address

Complete Summer Commencement information

COLUMBUS – Lee S. Shulman, president of The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, will be the speaker for summer quarter commencement on Aug. 29 at The Ohio State University.

Approximately 1,800 students will receive degrees at the ceremony, which begins at 2 p.m. at the Jerome Schottenstein Center.

A pioneer in the fields of teaching and teacher research, Shulman has written widely on issues of teaching and learning in higher education. In 1997, Shulman became the eighth president of The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

Created by Andrew Carnegie in 1905, the Foundation is a major national and international center for research and policy studies about teaching. Its mission is to address the problems that teachers at all levels face – how to succeed in the classroom, how best to achieve lasting student learning and how to assess the impact of teaching on students.

Ohio State has many ties with the Foundation. As one of the nation’s premiere teaching and research universities, the university was selected last year to participate in the Carnegie Initiative on the Doctorate (CID), a multi-year research and action project aimed at improving doctoral education at American universities. The foundation selected six Ohio State departments (Chemistry, Education, English, History, Mathematics and Neuroscience) – more departments than at any other institution – to join a study of 50 Partner departments around the country. Partner Departments will analyze all aspects of their doctoral programs and link specific activities to desired outcomes.

In announcing the CID, Shulman said the doctoral degree is critical to the continued improvement of all American education, from elementary school to graduate school.

“Lee Shulman is one of the nation’s leading scholars in the field of education. He is an expert in teacher education and, under his leadership, the foundation is conducting a major study of graduate education, the Carnegie Initiative on the Doctorate, in which six fields of study at OSU are involved. We are delighted to have him as commencement speaker,” said President Karen Holbrook. “Many of our graduates this quarter will earn Ph.D. or education degrees and will go on to careers in teaching. His insights will provide a wonderful closure to their educations at Ohio State.”

Shulman’s work and thinking have had tremendous influence on teachers and researchers. Since 1990, he has collaborated on programs and research to strengthen the role of teaching in higher education. These studies have emphasized the importance of “teaching as community property” and the central role of a “scholarship of teaching” in supporting the necessary changes in the cultures of higher education. Those themes are central to the mission of the Carnegie Foundation.

From 1982 to 1997 Shulman taught at Stanford University where he was the first Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education. Previously, he was a professor of educational psychology and medical education at Michigan State University, and also founding co-director of the Institute for Research on Teaching. He holds bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Chicago.

Shulman is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a past president of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). He also is a member of the National Academy of Education, having served as both vice-president and president of that organization. He has received AERA\'s highest honor, the career award for Distinguished Contributions to Educational Research. He is also the recipient of the 1995 E.L. Thorndike Award for Distinguished Psychological Contributions to Education from the American Psychological Association\'s Division of Educational Psychology.

Shulman’s research and writings have dealt with the study of teaching and teacher education; the growth of knowledge among those learning to teach; the assessment of teaching; medical education; the psychology of instruction in science, mathematics and medicine; the logic of educational research; and the quality of teaching in higher education.

His publications include numerous articles and essays, many of which are compiled in “Teaching as Community Property: Essays on Higher Education” and “The Wisdom of Practice: Essays on Teaching, Learning, and Learning to Teach,” (both Jossey-Bass, 2004).