Penn GSE Dean Andy Porter has announced the addition of five new members to the School's faculty in the 2008-09 academic year.

With start-up funding from the Verizon Foundation, Penn GSE Professors Betsy Rymes and Stanton Wortham are piloting the Penn Language and Literacy Project (PLLP).

Launching an applied research program that capitalizes on GSE’s strength in TESOL, biliteracy, applied linguistics and linguistic anthropology, the PLLP team hopes to help improve teaching and learning for English Language Learners (ELLs) in the Norristown district’s middle schools.

Socially isolated, highly stressed parents are more likely to abuse or neglect their children than are their more sociable, serene peers. Research also suggests that a strong social network can have a buffering effect on the corrosive effects of stress.

To evaluate an intervention designed to mitigate parental isolation and stress, John Fantuzzo and his colleagues conducted a randomized field trial with 116 socially isolated Head Start parents, 40 of whom had a history of child maltreatment.

Dean Porter is pleased to announce to the GSE community that John Fantuzzo has been appointed the fourth Albert M. Greenfield Professor of Human Relations.

The professorship was created in 1972 by a gift from the Albert M. Greenfield Foundation for a distinguished scholar in the field of human relations.

When the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation set out to create a "Rhodes Scholarship" for teachers, one of the schools they turned to was Penn GSE.

Penn was selected by the Princeton-based foundation as one of four sites nationally to host the new Leonore Annenberg/Woodrow Wilson Teaching Fellowship program.

PHILADELPHIA -- Penn GSE, in conjunction with the University’s Center for East Asian Studies and the East Asian Languages and Civilization program, announces a new program in teacher preparation leading to both the M.S.Ed. degree and faculty recommendation for certification from the Pennsylvania Department of Education in secondary education: Mandarin Chinese Language and Culture.

Andrew C. Porter, the dean of the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania, has been named to the board of trustees of the William T. Grant Foundation. Dr. Porter also serves on the GSE faculty as the George and Diane Weiss Professor of Education.

The University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education (Penn GSE) has recently received research grants totaling almost $5M.

These grants will allow GSE faculty to continue research into instructional improvement, grow nanotechnology instruction in Philadelphia schools, study the implementation of ground-breaking research on Black men in college, and prepare U.S. teachers interested in Chinese language instruction.

On August 1, 2007, Andrew C. Porter began his tenure as Dean and George and Diane Weiss Professor of Education of Penn GSE.

Before accepting the position at Penn GSE, Porter served as the Patricia and Rodes Hart Professor of Leadership Policy and Organization and Director of the Learning Sciences Institute at Vanderbilt University.

On July 17 to 19, 2007, the Graduate School of Education and the Fels Institute of Government will join with SchoolNet to cosponsor a three-day institute designed to provide educators with the tools they need to create and implement data-driven school improvement plans.

Titled "Building and Leading a Data-Driven School Improvement Process at Your School," the institute will feature a guided hands-on workshop where participants will apply what they have learned to build a comprehensive performance management system for their school.