Dean Strunk Looks Ahead

Katharine Strunk joined Penn GSE as dean last year because she wanted to have an impact. As a researcher, she had spent her career pursuing community-engaged scholarship in partnership with school districts and state departments of education, providing them with evidence to inform their policies. As a leader, she aimed to continue that kind of consequential work on a larger scale. Penn GSE, she reasoned, was the best place for it.

“Penn is a place where you do work that is intended to be applied,” she said. “We have some of the most brilliant scholars in the world housed here, but the difference is that we are not doing this research just to add more knowledge for knowledge’s sake. We are actually thinking about how we use that knowledge to improve the lives of learners and educators throughout the world. Everything we do here is intended to feed back into our communities—whether they’re here in Philadelphia, across the country, or across the globe.”

To that end, Dean Strunk spent her first year at Penn GSE in conversation with faculty, staff, students, and alumni to seek input for a plan for the School’s future that they could all work towards together. The result is a strategic vision for the next decade, Together for Good: A Vision for Transformational Impact, that expands the work Penn GSE is already doing, responds to urgent needs in the field of education, and inspires lasting change.

“This strategic vision is intended to build on GSE’s existing strengths and think about how we push them forward into the future,” she said. “We asked, from the very beginning of this whole strategic-visioning process, not just where do we want GSE to be in 10 years, but where do we want education to be in 10 years? And then, how do we not just meet that moment, but how do we make that moment?”

The plan is built around four main priorities: preparing and sustaining the educator workforce; fostering community engagement in Philadelphia, across the country, and around the world; innovating for the public good; and elevating education’s role in democratic society. These priorities cut across all areas of the School, its people, programs, scholarship, and mission. They are engineered to leverage and grow expertise, research, and programming that are already thriving at Penn GSE. And, most importantly, they represent crucial ways to improve the lives of students, educators, communities, and the fields of teaching and learning—both today and for a future we cannot yet even imagine.

“Our strategic vision is aspirational, but it’s also achievable,” she said. “But it’s going to take hard work. It’s going to take focus. It’s going to take everybody rowing in the same direction.”

Dean Strunk is ready to help steer that ship. She sees the role of the dean as empowering the School’s faculty and staff to “do the work that they do best,” while providing them with the resources they need to do the most significant research, support the most students, impact the most communities, and—in short—spur the most positive change.

“In 10 years, my hope is that we have changed the world,” she said. “I know that that sounds grandiose and unlikely, but I don’t think it is. We have the potential at GSE to do the work that reduces inequity and ensures more people can learn and succeed in a just and thriving society. . . . It’s time for real change, and I think that Penn GSE is poised to do it.”

Read the full story, including the details of the vision's four strategic priorities, in the fall/winter 2024 issue of Penn GSE Magazine.