Emery Stoops and Joyce King Stoops Dean
The Rossier School of Education
University of Southern California
Ph.D.
Expertise: Online Education, Education policy and Administration...additional information
Curriculum Vitae & Publications
News: Gallagher recently authored two op-ed pieces on the subject of effective online learning, published in U.S. News & World Report and in The Huffington Post.
Additional Information at News on Show & Tell
Karen Symms Gallagher is the Emery Stoops and Joyce King Stoops Dean of the USC Rossier School of Education. Since becoming Dean in 2000, she has focused the USC Rossier School of Education on its mission to improve learning in urban education locally, nationally and globally.
Dean Gallagher has been a professor, scholar and academic administrator at both public and private research universities throughout the United States. Before joining USC, she was the dean of education at the University of Kansas and prior to Kansas, she directed Ohio's Commission on Educational Improvement.
Dean Gallagher's distinguished career has established her reputation as one who transforms educational organizations to successfully achieve their goals. Under her leadership, the USC Rossier School, which celebrated its centennial anniversary in 2009 -2010, has risen to #17 among all education graduate schools in US News and World Report's 2014 national rankings. Its highly innovative master's and doctoral programs prepare educational leaders to be change agents as teachers, administrators, policy leaders and scholars.
In 2009, the Rossier School, under Dean Gallagher, launched its groundbreaking online Master of Arts in Teaching degree, the first of its kind from a major research university. The program has now graduated 1500 highly prepared teachers from around the country and the world, the majority of whom are teaching in hard-to-staff schools. For MAT students' fieldwork, the program partners with over 4000 individual schools and 1,400 districts.
Dean Gallagher is a leader of the Rossier team that opened USC Hybrid High School in September 2012. This LAUSD public charter school, of which the Dean chairs the oversight board, uses personalized curricula, the latest technology, and an expanded flexible school schedule to provide an academically rigorous program to underserved and at risk students. Hybrid High's goal is graduating 100% of its students college or career ready.
The Dean led her faculty in the design of its revolutionary Ed.D. program, now a national model, whose students tackle real problems of practice in schools and districts. Rossier's newest Global Executive Ed.D. is preparing administrators worldwide for 21st century education leadership.
In 2007, Dean Gallagher led the effort to bring Math for America to Los Angeles in an effort to address the shortage of quality math teachers in the area. A partnership between USC, Harvey Mudd College, and Claremont Graduate University, Math for America LA provides teacher preparation, stipends, and ongoing professional development and support for its teaching fellows over a five-year period. The program recently launched the Master Teacher Fellowship to develop experienced math teachers as mentors who will lead other teachers and initiate systemic changes in their schools.
This year, Dean Gallagher has been honored with USC's inaugural Provost's Prize for Innovation in Educational Practice. She was named to the 2013 cohort of Pahara-Aspen Fellows, a highly selective group of two dozen national education entrepreneurs and reform leaders, the first Dean of a school of education to be included. She was awarded the 2010 Los Angeles Urban League's Social Responsibility Award, and in 2011 the Phi Delta Kappa International Service Key by the USC chapter of PDK.She was also honored with the 2013 Annual Award for "significant contributions to education innovation and reform in California" by 120 state school superintendents, the Dean's Superintendents Advisory Group.
In 2010 she received the Los Angeles Urban League's Social Responsibility Award, and in 2011 the Phi Delta Kappa International Service Key by the USC chapter of PDK.
Dean Gallagher has published four books: Shaping School Policy: A Guide to Choices, Politics and Community Relations (1992) and Politics of Education Yearbook: The Politics of Teacher Preparation Reform (2000), College Bound (2010), and Urban Education: A Model for Leadership and Policy (2011). She has also written dozens of scholarly articles for publications such as Educational Policy, Research in Higher Education, and Early Education and Development.