ISKME Board Chair Mark Milliron Becomes Deputy Director of Gates Foundation Higher Education Effort

Feb. 7, 2010 - PRLog -- ISKME Board Chair Mark Milliron – Prominent Education and Innovation Leader – To Become Deputy Director of Gates Foundation Higher Education Efforts

ISKME Founder Lisa Petrides Elected Interim Chair until New Leader Is Named

Half Moon Bay, Calif. –  Mark Milliron, the Board Chair for the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME), will become the Deputy Director for Higher Education for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, effective February 1, 2010.  

Milliron, the president and CEO of Catalyze Learning and the former president and CEO of the League for Innovation in Community Colleges, has been board chair of ISKME since its inception seven years ago. He also has served as Vice President for Education and Medical Practice with SAS, the world’s largest private software company and as a trustee of Western Governors University.

Under Milliron’s chairmanship, ISKME has emerged as the global leader in research on social learning, open education resources (OER), and research-based knowledge sharing. ISKME has explored how developments in open source, social networking, resource use, and social media can impact educational practice and policy.

“Mark’s leadership has helped guide ISKME from a research-based think tank focused on the study and use of knowledge in education to an international resource for research, innovation, and practice,” said Lisa Petrides, ISKME’s President and founder. “Mark encouraged us to take risks, expand our role, and help the field better understand how to advance big ideas – from open source education to new kinds of delivery – that can make K-12 and higher education more student-focused and productive. I’m sure that Mark will be a splendid asset to the work of the Gates Foundation.”

An independent, nonprofit research institute, ISKME was launched in 2002 by researcher and former professor Lisa Petrides who, along with a team of educators, conducted a series of ground-breaking studies on data and information use in major urban school districts, community colleges, and other crucial parts of the education sector. Based in Half Moon Bay, Calif., ISKME conducts social science research, develops research-based innovations, and facilitates field building to improve knowledge sharing in education. ISKME helps K-20 education and the organizations that support it build capacity to collect and share information, apply it to well-defined problems, and create knowledge-driven environments focused on learning and success.

Since its founding, ISKME has developed multiple resources for educators in the field of technological innovation, including OER Commons and the Big Ideas Fest. OER Commons is an open source teaching and learning network that supports and facilitates the creation, sharing, and modification of open educational resources. Equally significant, the Big Ideas Fest brings prominent innovators in education and other fields together with key stakeholders across the entire learning field to spotlight, challenge, and change the ways in which education can be made relevant to learning.

The Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (http://www.iskme.org), located in Half Moon Bay, Calif., is a global leader in research and practice around knowledge sharing in the education sector. An independent, non-profit organization established in 2002, ISKME is well-known for its OER Commons initiative (http://www.oercommons.org), as well as its award winning international research on information and knowledge use in the education sector.

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Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education is an independent, nonprofit research institute that conducts social science research, develops research-based innovations & facilitates field building to improve knowledge sharing in education.