Penn GSE News
Prof. Stanton Wortham to be GSE Interim Dean
The Board of Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania has approved the appointment of GSE Professor Stanton Wortham as Interim Dean of the Graduate School of Education, effective August 1, 2006.
Wortham will succeed Dean Susan Fuhrman, who has resigned to accept the presidency of Teachers College, Columbia University. A search for a permanent Dean will begin over the summer and continue during the Fall semester.
Wortham, GSE's Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, and recently named as the new Judy and Howard Berkowitz Professor in Education, served from 2002 to 2004 as chair of the School's Educational Leadership Division, and was Acting Dean of GSE during the Fall 2002 semester, while Susan Fuhrman was on a scholarly leave of absence.
Dr. Wortham came to Penn in 1998 from Bates College and is a member of the Graduate Groups in Education, Anthropology, and Folklore and Folklife, as well as a member of the Associated Faculty of the Annenberg School for Communication. He has written widely on classroom discourse and the linguistic anthropology of education, including interactional positioning and social identity development in classrooms, media discourse, and autobiographical narrative. His work has involved action research and service learning, ethnography in urban and rural high schools and their surrounding communities, and discourse analysis. Dr. Wortham's interdisciplinary research has earned him a reputation as one of the premier scholars in the field. He teaches courses in education, culture and society; ethnographic and qualitative methods; and the linguistic anthropology of education.
Wortham is a Swarthmore College alumnus who earned his Ph.D. from the Committee on Human Development at the University of Chicago in 1992. As a graduate student, he was a University of Chicago Century Fellow and later was named a National Graduate (Javits) Fellow and a Spencer Foundation Dissertation Fellow. While at Bates College, he was awarded a National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship and was a recipient of the Maine Campus Compact Faculty Service-Learning Award. In 2001, Dr. Wortham received the American Educational Research Association's Cattell Early Career Award for Programmatic Research. The author of three books, he is currently working on a fourth, How Thinking Takes Place in Organizations, for Cambridge University Press. He has edited five scholarly volumes and authored numerous articles, book chapters and reviews. He is a member of the editorial boards of Critical Discourse Studies, Discourse Processes, Journal of Latinos and Education, Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, and Pedagogies: An International Journal, as well as Theory & Psychology and Mind, Culture & Activity, for both of which he is also Book Review Editor.
"The Graduate School of Education has moved into the top ranks of education schools and is playing an increasingly significant role in national policy discussions on the reform of American elementary, secondary, and higher education, as well as in international education," wrote President Gutmann in a note to the University Community. "Dr. Wortham's background and research have amply prepared him to take on this important leadership role in all of these efforts. We are confident that his prior leadership roles, strong interdisciplinary perspective, and intimate knowledge of the School and the University will enable Dr. Wortham to continue the significant growth and advancement of GSE."
Wortham will succeed Dean Susan Fuhrman, who has resigned to accept the presidency of Teachers College, Columbia University. A search for a permanent Dean will begin over the summer and continue during the Fall semester.
Wortham, GSE's Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, and recently named as the new Judy and Howard Berkowitz Professor in Education, served from 2002 to 2004 as chair of the School's Educational Leadership Division, and was Acting Dean of GSE during the Fall 2002 semester, while Susan Fuhrman was on a scholarly leave of absence.
Dr. Wortham came to Penn in 1998 from Bates College and is a member of the Graduate Groups in Education, Anthropology, and Folklore and Folklife, as well as a member of the Associated Faculty of the Annenberg School for Communication. He has written widely on classroom discourse and the linguistic anthropology of education, including interactional positioning and social identity development in classrooms, media discourse, and autobiographical narrative. His work has involved action research and service learning, ethnography in urban and rural high schools and their surrounding communities, and discourse analysis. Dr. Wortham's interdisciplinary research has earned him a reputation as one of the premier scholars in the field. He teaches courses in education, culture and society; ethnographic and qualitative methods; and the linguistic anthropology of education.
Wortham is a Swarthmore College alumnus who earned his Ph.D. from the Committee on Human Development at the University of Chicago in 1992. As a graduate student, he was a University of Chicago Century Fellow and later was named a National Graduate (Javits) Fellow and a Spencer Foundation Dissertation Fellow. While at Bates College, he was awarded a National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship and was a recipient of the Maine Campus Compact Faculty Service-Learning Award. In 2001, Dr. Wortham received the American Educational Research Association's Cattell Early Career Award for Programmatic Research. The author of three books, he is currently working on a fourth, How Thinking Takes Place in Organizations, for Cambridge University Press. He has edited five scholarly volumes and authored numerous articles, book chapters and reviews. He is a member of the editorial boards of Critical Discourse Studies, Discourse Processes, Journal of Latinos and Education, Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, and Pedagogies: An International Journal, as well as Theory & Psychology and Mind, Culture & Activity, for both of which he is also Book Review Editor.
"The Graduate School of Education has moved into the top ranks of education schools and is playing an increasingly significant role in national policy discussions on the reform of American elementary, secondary, and higher education, as well as in international education," wrote President Gutmann in a note to the University Community. "Dr. Wortham's background and research have amply prepared him to take on this important leadership role in all of these efforts. We are confident that his prior leadership roles, strong interdisciplinary perspective, and intimate knowledge of the School and the University will enable Dr. Wortham to continue the significant growth and advancement of GSE."