Alumnus Appointed to Head School of Education

Posted on April 25, 2008

G. Williamson McDiarmid ’69, Boeing Professor of teacher education at the University of Washington at Seattle, has been appointed as the new dean at the School of Education.

The appointment, which has been approved by the UNC Board of Trustees, takes effect Jan. 1, 2009, when McDiarmid will succeed Jill Fitzgerald, the current interim dean. McDiarmid also will hold the post of Alumni Distinguished Professor of education.

McDiarmid is a senior fellow with the Washington Center for Teaching and Learning and Teachers for a New Era, a national initiative designed to enhance K-12 teaching. With funding from the Carnegie Corp. of New York, Teachers for a New Era works to renew pre-service teacher preparation, create residencies for education graduates and track their classroom performance.

He also helped create the Teaching/Learning Partnership program, working in conjunction with the University of Washington’s College of Arts and Sciences, the Seattle Public Schools and the Seattle Education Association. The program prepares people in mid-career transition to teach math and science in Seattle’s high-need middle schools.

McDiarmid, a native of Raeford, previously served on the faculties of the University of Alaska-Anchorage, the University of Alaska-Fairbanks and Michigan State University. In Anchorage, he was director of the Institute of Social and Economic Research and professor of educational policy, where his research focused on Alaska Native educational issues.

In 2007, he was a visiting professor at Hebei Normal University in Shijiazhuang, China. His honors include being named a National Academy of Education Spencer Fellow and receiving the Outstanding Contribution to Interpretative Research Award from the American Educational Research Association. McDiarmid is the author of three books, many book chapters and numerous journal articles and research monographs.

He received a bachelor of arts degree with highest honors in American studies from Carolina in 1969 and earned his doctor of education degree in administration, planning and social policy from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education in 1984.

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Related coverage is available online:

• Dean of School of Education Leaving for Post at Columbia
  News report from April 2007
• Angling for Change: New education dean seeks closer ties with rest of UNC and N.C.

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