People on the Move: Dr. Jha Returns to Brown, Papay Heads Annenberg, Infante-Green to Serve on CCSSO
Friday, June 09, 2023
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After leading the federal COVID-19 response, Dr. Ashish Jha to resume role as dean of Brown’s School of Public Health
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After spending 14 months on temporary leave to lead the U.S. government’s COVID-19 pandemic response and recovery efforts, Dr. Ashish K. Jha will return to lead the Brown University School of Public Health. Jha will resume his post as dean of SPH on July 1, as Interim Dean Ronald Aubert continues his leadership through the close of Brown’s academic and fiscal years before taking on the permanent role of senior associate dean of education at the school.
Jha will return to Brown having concluded his term as White House COVID-19 response coordinator, a position to which U.S. President Joseph R. Biden appointed him in March 2022. The federal COVID-19 public health emergency expired May 11.
Brown Interim Provost Larry Larson praised Jha’s public service and also the strong leadership of SPH during his temporary leave.
“Ashish’s willingness to serve the nation in a moment of such tremendous challenge, and his commitment to focusing on science and solutions, sets an excellent example for every aspiring public health leader,” Larson said. “We’re excited to welcome him back to Brown. At the same time, we are deeply grateful to Ron Aubert for his outstanding leadership in ensuring continued positive momentum at the School of Public Health.”
In his first 18 months as dean, Jha introduced a series of high-impact initiatives, championing an expansive portfolio of research and education priorities, and recruiting world-class faculty with expertise in global health, information disorders, health policy reform, and pandemic preparedness and response.
Under Aubert’s leadership, the School of Public Health has continued to thrive. The Health Equity Scholars program, founded in 2021, has grown significantly, with master of public health degree scholarships now available for graduates of historically Black colleges and universities, Hispanic-serving institutions and Rhode Island residents. The school’s Pandemic Center, launched last September, is connecting policymakers with data-driven recommendations to mitigate disruption during global epidemic events.
Other research and education initiatives led by SPH faculty are making a positive difference on public health challenges ranging from Rhode Island’s overdose epidemic, to air and water pollution, to Alzheimer’s and dementia.
“I’m grateful to the scholars, educators and students who have continued to advance Dean Jha’s vision and who make the School of Public Health a dynamic and impactful place to work and study,” Aubert said. “Their collective research continues to improve lives in Rhode Island and around the world. We are all very excited about the return of Dean Jha and look forward to quickly translating his real-world, real-time policy work into the educational experience of our students.”
Jha said his return offers an opportunity to employ insights from the nation’s pandemic response as educators across the school focus on training the next generation of public health leaders.
“We are in a world drastically altered by the COVID-19 pandemic,” Jha said. “For all we have accomplished to reduce illness and save lives, COVID-19 has exposed the weaknesses in our public health and health care systems. I look forward to returning to Brown to continue our groundbreaking work transforming public health education, research and practice to convert these weaknesses to strengths.”
Education scholar John Papay to direct Brown’s Annenberg Institute for School Reform
As director, Papay will continue to position the institute as a hub of education scholarship that confronts some of the most pressing issues in teaching and learning.
John Papay, a leading scholar on educational inequality and an associate professor of education at Brown University, has been appointed the next director of Brown’s Annenberg Institute for School Reform.
Papay has served as interim director since January. In taking on the role for the longer term, he will continue to position the Annenberg Institute to serve as a hub of education scholarship that confronts some of the most pressing issues in teaching and learning, including opportunity gaps and learning loss during the COVID-19 pandemic. By creating a broader set of opportunities for engagement and learning for students, postdoctoral fellows, researchers, scholars and practitioners across campus and beyond, Papay plans to expand the institute's robust set of collaborative research projects, generating insights that can be directly applied to teaching practices and education policy.
Brown Dean of the Faculty Leah VanWey said Papay’s nearly two decades of scholarly experience, combined with his deep understanding of the Annenberg Institute and its mission to improve educational opportunities for children, made him an ideal fit for the role.
“John’s experience working within the University will enable the Annenberg Institute to build an intentional, interdisciplinary community that will strengthen the connections and interplay across leading scholars, grow the research enterprise at Brown, and produce a growing body of relevant, rigorous research that builds new knowledge of promising educational practices and of the conditions that enable students who have historically experienced marginalization to thrive,” VanWey said. “I look forward to working with him to identify ways to build on the institute’s record of success.”
Since joining the Brown faculty in 2012, Papay has focused on two main research areas: policies that affect teachers and their work, and how schools and policies perpetuate or ameliorate educational inequality. His recent work has examined how schools and professional learning opportunities can support teacher effectiveness and development, how schools can staff their classrooms more effectively and improve the diversity of the educator workforce, and how schools can improve longer-term outcomes for students living in poverty.
"I'm excited to be taking on this tremendous responsibility, following in the footsteps of transformative leaders who have helped shape the institute over the years," Papay said. "I’m eager to continue to grow Annenberg into a leading national education research institute and the hub for applied education research here at Brown as we work to connect more directly to the University. I’m also excited for our continued partnership and engagement with local schools and districts in Rhode Island."
Much of Papay’s research involves collaboration with policymakers and educators. He currently leads the Educational Opportunity in Massachusetts project, a longstanding partnership with the Massachusetts Departments of Elementary and Secondary Education. He is one of the founding senior researchers of the Research Partnership for Professional Learning, which seeks to identify the features of professional learning that improve students’ classroom experiences, well-being and academic growth, with a specific focus on students from historically marginalized groups.
Together with colleagues at the Annenberg Institute, Papay also built a partnership between the institute, the Rhode Island Department of Education and the Providence Public School District. The partnership brings together local education leaders and researchers to improve student engagement and teacher learning, among other things, by combining educators’ expertise with data-driven research methods.
Papay is also a research affiliate with the Project on the Next Generation of Teachers at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. A former high school history teacher, he earned a bachelor’s degree from Haverford College and master’s and doctoral degrees from Harvard University.
Papay succeeds Susanna Loeb, who served as Annenberg Institute director from 2018 to 2022.
CCSSO Announces Rhode Island Chief Infante-Green Joins Board of Directors
The Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) today announced Rhode Island Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education Angélica Infante-Green will join its Board of Directors.
“It is a great honor to have been selected to serve and support the important mission and work of CCSSO,” said Commissioner Infante-Green. “I look forward to using my experience and expertise to ensure that the organization can help continue to support education leaders across the country address some of the most pressing issues we face in education in the wake of the pandemic.”
CCSSO’s Board of Directors manages the overall business affairs of the Council and is the governing body of the organization. The Board is composed of the president, the president-elect, the past president and six directors elected by members of the CCSSO membership.
“In her tenure as a chief, Commissioner Infante-Green has led important work to intervene in low-performing schools and to redesign high school graduation requirements to allow for more flexibility for students while ensuring they have the preparation needed to enter college and career,” said CCSSO Chief Executive Officer Carissa Moffat Miller. “She will bring an important expertise and point of view to our Board of Directors as they guide CCSSO’s work.”
Infante-Green has served as Rhode Island Commissioner since April 2019. In her capacity, she instituted several major efforts to improve K-12 education across the state. Most notably, she led efforts to pass and implement readiness-based high school graduation requirements which were approved by the Rhode Island Council on Elementary and Secondary Education unanimously after a robust 18-month public engagement process where they became the most commented-on set of regulations in Rhode Island K-12 education history.
The Commissioner also spearheaded a comprehensive review of the Providence Public School District and is now leading the state intervention in the capital city’s schools to overcome decades of neglect and poor performance. In the midst of the pandemic, the Commissioner convened the Learning, Equity & Accelerated Pathways (LEAP) Task Force, which released its report and recommendations in April of 2021 to help guide accelerated learning opportunities to rebuild Rhode Island’s educational system post-pandemic. As Commissioner, she also led efforts to reopen schools safely and return to in-person learning statewide. She previously worked in the New York Department of Education, the New York City School Department and as a bilingual classroom teacher.
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