Russell Rumberger, a faculty member in the Department of Education of UC Santa Barbara’s Gevirtz School, has been named a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association (AERA).
The purpose of the American Educational Research Association Fellows Program is to honor education researchers with substantial research accomplishments, to convey the Association’s commitment to excellence in research, and to enable the next generation of emerging scholars to appreciate the value of sustained achievements in research and the breadth of scholarship worthy of recognition. The Program is intended to recognize excellence in research and be inclusive of the scholarship that constitutes and enriches education research as an interdisciplinary field. Fellows are nominated by their peers, selected and recommended by the Fellows Committee, and approved by the AERA Council, the Association’s elected governing group.
AERA Fellows at UCSB’s Gevirtz School include Richard Durán and Judith Green in the Department of Education and Michael Furlong in the Department of Counseling, Clinical, and School Psychology. In addition, faculty members Rich Mayer in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences (and affiliated with the GGSE) and Lorraine McDonnell in the Department of Political Science are also AERA Fellows. As of last April, there were 534 total fellows.
Russell Rumberger recently served as Vice Provost for Education Partnerships, University of California Office of the President. A faculty member at UCSB since 1987, Professor Rumberger has published widely in several areas of education: education and work; the schooling of disadvantaged students, particularly school dropouts and linguistic minority students; school effectiveness; and education policy. He is author of the highly acclaimed book, Dropping Out: Why Students Drop Out of High School and What Can be Done About It (Harvard University Press, 2011). Rumberger has served as a member of the National Research Council's Committee on Increasing High School Students’ Engagement and Motivation to Learn (2004), the Committee on the Impact of Mobility and Change on the Lives of Young Children, Schools, and Neighborhoods (2010), and the Committee on Improved Measurement of High School Dropout and Completion Rates (2011). He also served as a panel member for the Institute of Education Sciences' Practice Guide, Dropout Prevention (2008).
As Vice Provost for Education Partnerships, he was responsible for the University’s engagement in P-20 education in California, including policies and programs that produce high quality teachers and promote achievement and college access for all students.
He currently directs the California Dropout Research Project, which is producing a series of reports and policy briefs about the dropout problem in California and a state policy agenda to improve California's high school graduation rate.
Founded in 1916, AERA is the national interdisciplinary research association for approximately 25,000 scholars who undertake research in education. The organization aims to advance knowledge about education, to encourage scholarly inquiry related to education, and to promote the use of research to improve education and serve the public good.