Karen Symms Gallagher, Ph.D.
Emery Stoops and Joyce King Stoops Dean
The Rossier School of Education
University of Southern California

Karen Symms Gallagher is the Emery Stoops and Joyce King Stoops Dean of the USC Rossier School of Education. Since assuming this role in 2000, she has led her faculty, students, staff and alumni in a strategic plan with a mission of strengthening urban education locally, nationally and globally.

Dr. 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.

Dr. 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 celebrates its centennial anniversary in 2009 -2010, has risen to the top ten among private universities in national rankings (US News and World Report). Its highly innovative masters and doctoral programs prepare educational leaders to be change agents as teachers, administrators, policy leaders and scholars.

The hallmark of Dr. Gallagher’s leadership style is creating mutually beneficial partnerships to rethink and resolve complex educational and social issues facing our own neighborhoods, our nation and the world. One of these partnerships is with the educational for-profit company, 2Tor, with whom the Rossier School has launched a groundbreaking online Masters of Arts in Teaching degree, the first of its kind from a major research university.

On a global scale, Dean Gallagher has established APRISE (Asia Pacific Rim International Study Experience), which seeks to build linkages with universities and school systems throughout Pacific Rim countries, promoting faculty/student exchanges, research opportunities, and new graduate programs that prepare administrators worldwide for 21st century university leadership.

Locally, Dean Gallagher and her faculty have partnered with the Los Angeles Urban League to create and implement Neighborhoods@Work, a model for sustainable neighborhood revitalization in central Los Angeles. With the Urban League and the Tom and Ethel Bradley Foundation, Rossier has established the Greater Crenshaw Educational Partnership (GCEP) to assume leadership of Crenshaw High School, an urban high-need school.

Dr. Gallagher has published two 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). She has also written dozens of scholarly articles for publications such as Educational Policy, Research in Higher Education, and Early Education and Development.

Dr. Gallagher recently completed her appointment as a member of the National Science Foundation’s Commission on 21st Century Education in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, which issued its National Action Plan to address the critical needs of the US STEM education system in October 2007. In addition, having just completed a five-year appointment, she has stepped down as the Association of Independent California Colleges and Universities’ representative to the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing. She has also served as the president of the USC chapter of Phi Kappa Phi and is currently a member of the Los Angeles Urban League’s Emeritus Board of Directors.