June 26, 2003
Learning sciences scholar to join College of Ed.
John Bransford, regarded as perhaps the nation’s pre-eminent scholar in learning sciences, will be hired as a professor in the UW’s College of Education, Acting Provost David Thorud has announced.
Bransford is co-director of the Learning Technology Center at Vanderbilt University, where he has been on the faculty since 1972 and is centennial professor of psychology and education. He is a member of both the National Academy of Education and the National Academy of Science.
Bransford was the lead author for the National Academy of Science book, How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience and School and has developed a number of well-known multimedia teaching tools, including the Scientists in Action series, the Little Planet Literacy series and the Jasper Woodbury Problem Solving series.
“I’ve been struck by the incredible talent and collaborative spirit that exists, both throughout the university and in the surrounding community,” Bransford said in reference to the UW. “People who have been there for a while may take this for granted, but I find the atmosphere to be unique and absolutely energizing.”
College of Education Dean Patricia Wasley said Bransford would lead the UW’s effort to develop a center on the science of learning. Likely partners in the prospective center include the Institute for Brain and Learning Science; the Center for Mind, Brain & Learning; Computer Science & Engineering; the College of Education; Stanford University; the Stanford Research Institute; and the University of California, Berkeley.
“John will help the University of Washington take a position of prominence in the emerging field of learning sciences,” Wasley said.
Vanderbilt’s Learning Technology Center, which was created under Bransford’s leadership in 1984, has grown from seven faculty members to nearly 70. Bransford and his colleagues in the center are now working on a project with the potential to connect all of the nation’s K-12 schools through the Internet.
Bransford’s appointment will be effective Sept. 1. His position will be funded through the end of the 2007–08 academic year by the Mifflin Professorship, which was created through a significant gift in 1995 from Huck and Susan Huckabay. At the beginning of the 2008–09 academic year Bransford will be named the institution’s first endowed chair in learning sciences. A pair of anonymous donors had pledged $2.6 million to support the endowed chair.
