Ryan to Step Down as Ed School Dean

This article originally appeared in the Harvard Gazette.

After leading the Graduate School of Education for four years, Dean James E. Ryan has announced that he will leave Harvard at the end of this academic year to become the University of Virginia’s next president, beginning Oct. 1, 2018.

Ryan, who is also the Charles William Eliot Professor of Education, is a top scholar on law and education, an authority on school desegregation and school choice, and a forceful advocate for expanding educational opportunities to close the student achievement gap.

Under Ryan’s leadership, the School of Education has strengthened its standing at the top of its field in numerous ways. He helped guide efforts to expand professional development and teacher-training courses, both online and on campus, and oversaw the launch of innovative programs on teaching and learning. He also led the School’s record fund-raising efforts.

“While I am excited and honored by the chance to serve my alma mater and a university at which I taught for fifteen years, it will be difficult to leave HGSE,” said Ryan in a letter to the Ed School community, announcing his departure. “I was an outsider to this institution when I arrived in 2013, but you quickly made me feel welcome. In a short period of time, I came not only to deeply admire this community, but to love it. The sense of mission, the dedication and talent, and the care and compassion that abound on Appian Way make this a remarkable community, and it has been one of the great privileges of my professional life to be a part of it.”

“An outstanding academic leader, teacher, and scholar with a commitment to improving and expanding education for all, Jim Ryan worked with colleagues to bring a transformational vision to the Harvard Graduate School of Education,” said Harvard President Drew Faust. “Harvard will miss his thoughtful and compassionate leadership, and I will miss Jim’s voice, wisdom, and humor as a member of the Council of Deans and a leader here on campus. I congratulate the University of Virginia’s Board of Visitors and the entire UVA community on the selection of their next president.”

Faust said she will launch a search for Ryan’s successor shortly and will welcome advice on the selection from across the Ed School community.

Ryan grew up in a blue-collar New Jersey suburb, attending Yale University and the University of Virginia School of Law. His early years fueled a passion that he said “stems from personal experience” on the importance of fair and effective education. He is a longtime champion of greater diversity, equity, and inclusion in education, and has written extensively on those principles while promoting programs embracing them.

With colleagues, he began an ongoing community-wide conversation on fulfilling the promise of diversity to help prepare students to work in diverse environments, and launched Reimagining Diverse and Equitable Schools (RIDES), a project to boost the number of diverse K–12 schools and to share best practices to help them tap into their diversity to thrive. ...

For more, read the Harvard Gazette.