Dear Colleagues,
I am pleased to let you know that MIT's Priscilla King Gray Public Service Center (PKG) has appointed Alison Badgett, Ed.D. as the new associate dean and director.
She brings with her decades of experience in the nonprofit and public policy realms, playing a leading role in tackling complex social issues from prison education to scaling blended teaching in K-12 to affordable housing and homelessness.
Alison, who is finishing up a book on reimagining civic education at elite private schools, is a thought leader on how to integrate community-engaged learning with systematic change, making her ideally suited to actualize MIT’s mission of educating transformative leaders.
In fact, she arrives at a critical time when the Institute is all-in on tackling pressing issues such as climate change, artificial intelligence, and global economic inequality. PKG will have an ever-increasing role to play in those endeavors by engaging more students in social impact work and facilitating greater integration of social innovation into teaching and research.
Alison has expressed her excitement about working with the talented staff at PKG
and says that she is “thrilled by this truly unique opportunity to reimagine public service education” and make the Center a model for all of higher ed. I have no doubt she will do so given her wealth of experience, finely honed skills, and commitment to social change.
Her most recent endeavor is From Charity to Change, a consulting firm that she founded dedicated to helping nonprofits apply systems-change strategies to redress the root causes of complex problems.
Prior to this role, Alison served as executive director of the Petey Greene Program, which recruits and trains 1,000 volunteers annually from 30 universities to provide tutoring for currently and formerly incarcerated students in 50 prisons and reentry programs, and as executive director of Raise Your Hand Texas, an organization focused on improving education by piloting innovative learning practices. Under her guidance, that organization launched a five-year, $10 million initiative to showcase and scale blended learning, and a 10-year, $50 million initiative to improve teacher preparation and the status of teaching.
Before joining Raise Your Hand Texas, she was executive director of several organizations related to housing and homelessness in New York and New Jersey. During that time she developed a $3.6 million demonstration program to permanently house the chronically homeless, which served as a model for state and national replication. She also served as senior policy advisor to the governor of New Jersey, providing counsel on land use, redevelopment, and housing.
Those curious about her approach to strategic planning and interested to learn how to successfully bring change to an organization should read “Systems Change: Making the Aspirational Actionable” (Stanford Social Innovation Review), and “Integrating Service Learning with Systemic Change” (Cases on Academic Program Redesign for Greater Racial and Social Justice).
Alison received her Global Executive Ed.D. from the University of Southern California (Dissertation: “Integrating education for social justice and social innovation: A program innovation to increase student justice-oriented action”); her M.A. in philosophy and education from Columbia University, Teachers College; and her A.B. in politics from Princeton University.
I want to thank Alison Hynd and Vippy Yee for serving as PKG’s interim co-directors; Kate Trimble, who led the hiring process; and all the members of the search committee and participants in the search process, including staff, students, and faculty from across MIT.
Alison begins her role this July. Please join me in welcoming her to PKG and MIT.
Sincerely,
Ian
—
Ian A. Waitz
Vice Chancellor for Undergraduate and Graduate Education and Jerome C. Hunsaker Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics
