2008 Summer Retreat
Make a Difference with Differences
Ritz-Carlton Lodge
at Lake Oconee
Greensboro, Georgia
June 22 – 25, 2008

Alan B. Krueger
Bendheim Professor of Economics & Public Affairs, Princeton University
Krueger has published widely on the economics of education, terrorism, labor demand, income distribution, social insurance, labor market regulation, and environmental economics. Since 1987 he has held a joint appointment in the Economics Department and Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University. He is the founding Director of the Princeton University Survey Research Center and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and of the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). He is the author of What Makes A Terriorist: Economics and the Roots of Terrorism and Education Matters: A Selection of Essays on Education, and co-author of Myth and Measurement: The New Economics of the Minimum Wage, and co-author of Inequality in America: What Role for Human Capital Policies? He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Russell Sage Foundation and of the Board of Directors of the American Institutes for Research. He is a member of the editorial board of Science, and was editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives from 1996 to 2002 and co-editor of the Journal of the European Economic Assocaition from 2003-05. In 1994-95 he served as Chief Economist at the U.S. Department of Labor. He is currently a member of the Executive Committee of the American Economic Association and serves as chief economist for the National Council on Economic Education. He was named a Sloan Fellow in Economics in 1992 and an NBER Olin Fellow in 1989-90. He was elected a Fellow of the Econometric Society in 1996 and a fellow of the Society of Labor Economists in 2005. He was awarded the Kershaw Prize by the Association for Public Policy and Management in 1997 (for distinguished contributions to public policy analysis by someone under the age of 40) and Mahalanobis Memorial Medal by the Indian Econometric Society in 2001. In 2002 he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and in 2003 he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. He was awarded the IZA Prize in Labor Economics with David Card in 2006. From March 2000 to March 2006 he was a regular contributor to the "Economic Scene" column in the New York Times. He received a B.S. degree (with honors) from Cornell University's School of Industrial & Labor Relations, an A.M. in Economics from Harvard University in 1985, and a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University in 1987.

John Diamond
Assistant Professor of Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education
John Diamond is a sociologist of education who focuses on how race, ethnicity, and social class intersect with school leadership, practices, and policies to shape the educational opportunities and outcomes of children. His recent research includes a four-year study of urban school leadership (The Distributed Leadership Study); an examination of the implications of social class for African-American parents' educational participation; a study of race, social class, and student achievement in suburban schools; and a study of the development and diffusion of teachers' expectations of students. For the last study, Diamond was the recipient of a National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship. In addition to the NAE/Spencer Fellowship, he has received research awards from the National Science Foundation and the American Educational Research Association/Institute for Education Sciences. Diamond has a B.A. in sociology and political science from the University of Michigan and a Ph.D. in sociology from Northwestern University.

Kurt W. Fischer
Ph.D., Harvard Graduate School of Education
Fischer studies cognitive and emotional development and learning from birth through adulthood, combining analysis of the commonalities across people with the diversity of pathways of learning and development. His work focuses on the organization of behavior and the ways it changes, especially with development, learning, emotion, and culture. In dynamic skill theory, he provides a single framework to analyze how organismic and environmental factors contribute to the rich variety of developmental change and learning across and within people. His research includes students’ learning and problem solving, brain development, concepts of self in relationships, cultural contributions to social-cognitive development, early reading skills, emotions, child abuse, and brain development. One product of his research is a single scale for measuring learning, teaching, and curriculum across domains, which is being used to assess and coordinate key aspects of pedagogy and assessment in schools.

Joi Watson
Actor
Kendyl “Joi” Watson is a southern talent from Dallas, Texas pursuing her dreams and obeying her call as an actor within the theater and film industry. She’s nationally and internationally trained and educated with a BFA in Acting from the first graduating class of the University of Minnesota/Guthrie Theater Acting Program. Her education has also included several programs overseas. These include the Royal National Theater in London with the British American Dramatic Academy (BADA), Gaiety School for Actors in Dublin, and most recently the Vancouver Film School Acting for Film and TV program where she graduated with honors. She’s appeared in numerous theater productions in Minneapolis and recently shared in an IVEY award for “best emotional impact for a theatre production” called SEZ SHE.

Patricia Gándara
Professor of Education, UCLA, Co-Director, The Civil Rights Project/ Proyecto Derechos Civiles

Helen Sung
Pianist & Composer
Of Chinese heritage and a native of Houston, Texas, Helen attended Houston’s High School for the Performing and Visual Arts (HSPVA). Originally an aspiring classical pianist, Helen was bitten by the jazz bug while pursuing undergraduate studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Her choice to switch to jazz was decided in 1995 when Helen was accepted into the inaugural class of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance at the New England Conservatory of Music. An intensive program accepting only seven students (forming a jazz septet), the Institute proved to be an unprecedented opportunity to study and perform with some of the greatest masters of jazz music. Helen presently lives in New York City where she maintains a busy schedule of performing, touring, and recording. She has worked with such jazz masters as Clark Terry, Steve Turre, and legendary composer and saxophonist Wayne Shorter – and with such jazz luminaries as Regina Carter, Steve Wilson, and T.S.Monk. She has also performed with such big bands as the Charles Mingus Big Band, Diva, and is a current member of Clark Terry’s “Young Titans of Jazz” Big Band.

Janie Ward
Professor of Education and Chair of the Africana Studies department, Simmons College
In addition to teaching, Janie Ward works with youth counselors, secondary school educators, and other practitioners in a variety of settings. Her research focuses on adolescent development, particularly the racial identity and moral development of African American girls and boys. Ward has written and edited numerous books, chapters, and articles, and has made many media guest appearances. She is author of The Skin We're In: Teaching our Children to be Emotionally Strong, Socially Smart and Spiritually Connected (Free Press, 2000) and Gender and Teaching, with Francis Maher (Lawrence Erlbaum Publications, 2001). With her thesis advisor, Carol Gilligan, she co-edited Mapping the Moral Domain: A Contribution of Women's Thinking to Psychological Theory and Education. She also edited Souls Looking Back: Life Stories of Growing Up Black, a compilation of autobiographical statements written by African American, Caribbean, and black Canadian college students. From 2000-2006 Ward was a research associate at the Harvard Graduate School of Education where she co-directed with Wendy Luttrell, Project ASSERT (Accessing Strengths and Supporting Effective Resistance in Teaching), a five-year, school-based research study and curriculum development project designed to guide and support urban teachers around gender, race, and class dynamics that impact their work with youth.

Richard Erdmann
President and Founder, Syfr Corporation
Richard Erdmann founded Syfr to stimulate creative problem solving in education, primarily through conferences and professional development. Throughout his 35 year career in education, he pioneered the integration of technology, teaching and learning. In the early1970s, he began his career as a performance-based contractor – an education supplier paid on the basis of improving student performance - a management technique suggestive of today’s NCLB. In the 1980s and 1990s, his innovative software companies established many “firsts” in education technology, while simultaneously embracing the role of the teacher in the classroom. These include the first educational networked products, the use of recorded audio to improve fluency, and bridging state standards and teacher-created lesson plans through online testing products. He has always been a part of an education family with his wife currently serving as a principal, his mother and sister were teachers and his father worked as an economics professor at the University of Wisconsin.

His view of American education is based on a life-long commitment to understanding the many forces that impact our schools, including history, race, class, culture, and economics to name just a few. His Syfr events consistently address issues at the leading edge of educational debate and change, such as the globalization and technology in the labor market and its meaning for educational reform and politics or the improvement of educational leadership through an expansion of the pool of potential leaders by focusing on women in education. His Syfr events tend to re-frame educational issues to create inquiry and dialogue among participants in order to bring meaningful change to our schools.