GSE Interim Dean: Stanton Wortham

President Amy Gutmann and Provost Ron  Daniels announced that Stanton Wortham will serve as  Interim Dean of the Graduate School of Education, effective on August 1, 2006. Dr. Wortham  succeeds Dr. Susan Fuhrman (Almanac May 23, 2006), who has resigned to accept the presidency of Teachers College at Columbia University. A search for a permanent Dean will begin this summer and continue during the fall semester.

Currently Professor of Education and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at GSE, Dr. Wortham served from 2002 to 2004 as chair of the School’s Educational Leadership Division. He also previously served as Acting Dean of  GSE during the fall 2002 semester, while Dean Fuhrman was on a scholarly leave of absence (Almanac February 19, 2002). 

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, and a member of the Associated Faculty of the Annenberg School for Communication. Dr. Wortham has written widely on classroom discourse and the linguistic anthropology of education. His research applies techniques from linguistic anthropology to study 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.

Dr.  Wortham is a Swarthmore College alumnus who earned his Ph.D. from the Committee on Human Development at the University of Chicago in 1992. “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 during Dean Fuhrman’s 11-year tenure and strengthen intellectual and research ties between the School and the rest of the University. We are fortunate, indeed, that the Graduate School of Education will have Stanton Wortham at its helm during this period of transition. He has our strong support, as well as that of his fellow GSE faculty and colleagues across the University,” added President Gutmann.