Tom Carroll, executive director of the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, will be the guest speaker at the Learning and Performance Support Laboratory's Spring Symposium on Monday, March 25 at 11:15 a.m. in Room G-5 of Aderhold Hall. 

Carroll's presentation is titled "If We Didn't Have Today's Schools, Would We Create Today's Schools?"

Abstract: Our schools are becoming hubs in networked learning communities. In these learning environments, teaching becomes a continuous learning activity, and the teacher's role is transformed from knowledge transmitter to knowledge generator. How can we use these powerful technologies to support leaders who are developing new designs for learning that build on what we know about how people learn? 

Background: Tom Carroll leads the commission's efforts to raise standards for teaching and learning, improve teacher professional development, and restructure school environments to meet the needs of all students. 

Carroll's career spans three decades. His appointments and achievements include:

• Founding Director, Preparing Tomorrow's Teachers to Use Technology ("PT3"). This discretionary grants program at the U.S. Department of Education has awarded a total of $275 million to support over 300 colleges and universities, school districts and state education agencies that are using modern learning technologies to redesign teacher preparation.

• Founding Director, Technology Innovation Challenge Grants at the U.S. Department of Education. This $ 75 million national Challenge Grant strategy supports K-12 educators, business leaders, and community members who are working to transform factory era schools into information age learning centers. 

• Deputy Director, Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) at the U.S. Department of Education, where he provided leadership for $18 million a year in program innovation grants to colleges and universities working to improve, teacher education, service-learning, and education for a changing economy.

• Carroll served as Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Education, Clark University (in Worcester, MA., from 1975-1979), where he conducted research supported by the National Institute of Education, The National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education. 

• Carroll holds a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from State University of New York at Buffalo (1976).

• He served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Lesotho (Southern Africa) from 1967-1969. As a Rural Community Development Officer, he designed and managed the construction of village water supply systems. He also helped establish, and taught in, an adult education program for the Lesotho Government.