Learning Sciences Lunch and Learn with Dean Christopher Span “My Journey to the GSE”

12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Graduate School of Education (10 Seminary Pl) – Room #124

Connect with colleagues during this in-person presentation at the GSE (Room 124). Pizza will be provided! Can’t attend in person? Join us remotely via Zoom!

This presentation is designed to be conversational and provides an overview of Dean Span’s academic journey. It highlights key serendipitous moments that have shaped his development as a student, professor, administrator, and engaged citizen. Through this reflection, he aims to illustrate his core values as an academic and outline his vision for advancing these principles in his new role as Dean of the Graduate School of Education.

Christopher M. Span is Dean and Distinguished Professor of the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers—New Brunswick. Prior to his arrival to the GSE, he was a Professor in the Department of Education Policy, Organization, and Leadership (EPOL), and Chief of Staff and Associate Chancellor for Administration and PreK-12 Initiatives at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He brings a comprehensive background in higher education administration, having served in progressively responsible roles at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign over the past twenty years.

These experiences include serving for more than a decade as an Associate Dean in the College of Education for all curricular and student matters, as a Chancellor-appointed Faculty Athletics Representative (FAR), who represented the Chancellor on all matters related to intercollegiate athletics, and as the Chief of Staff for the Chancellor. He is a historian of education who specializes in the educational history of African Americans in the 19th  century.  He is the author of From Cotton Field to Schoolhouse: African American Education in Mississippi, 1862-1875, co-editor of Using Past as Prologue: Contemporary Perspectives on African American Educational History, and has published numerous articles and book chapters on the educational history of African Americans. He is the past Vice President of Division F (History of American Education) for the American Educational Research Association (AERA), and past President of the History of Education Society.

View the flyer.