HTH Graduate School of Education Faculty

The HTH Graduate School of Education faculty reflects the school’s commitment to applying theoretical frameworks to practice and to linking educational leadership with graduate level coursework. All faculty members are experienced educators who introduce both the theory and actuality of effective teaching, research, and leadership to the graduate school classroom.

Stacey Caillier, Ph.D. Ben Daley. M.A. Heather Lattimer, Ed.D. Robert C. Riordan, Ed.D.

Jeff Robin, M.F.A. Larry Rosenstock, J.D. Azul Terronez, M.A. Kelly Wilson, M.A.

HTH GSE Board of Mentors

The HTH GSE Board of Mentors is a distinguished panel of leaders and innovators in K-12 and post-secondary education, many of whom have contributed key ideas to the creation and development of the HTH GSE.  Board members serve in an advisory capacity, mentoring GSE faculty and students, visiting the campus to participate in the HTH Speaker Series, and offering guidance as to future directions for the institution.

Richard C. Atkinson, Ph.D. Libia Gil, Ph.D. Gary Hoachlander, Ph.D. Frank Kemerer, Ph.D.

Deborah W. Meier, M.A. Leslie Santee Siskin, Ph.D. Nancy Faust Sizer Theodore R. Sizer, Ph.D.

Richard C. Atkinson, Ph.D.

HTH GSE Board of Mentors

Richard C. Atkinson served from 1995-2003 as the seventeenth president of the University of California system. His eight-year tenure was marked by innovative approaches to admissions and outreach, research initiatives to accelerate the university’s contributions to the state’s economy, and a challenge to the country’s most widely used admissions examination—the SAT 1—that initiated major changes in the way millions of America’s youth will be tested for college admissions. Before becoming president of the UC System, he served for fifteen years as chancellor of UC San Diego, leading its emergence as one of the top research universities in the nation. His own research in cognitive science and psychology addresses problems of memory and cognition. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, the National Academy of Education, and the American Philosophical Society. He is a former director of the National Science Foundation, a past president of the American Association of Universities, and was a long-term member of the faculty at Stanford University. A mountain in Antarctica is named is his honor.

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Stacey Caillier, Ph.D.   

Director of the Teacher Leadership program

Stacey Caillier is the Director of the HTH GSE Teacher Leadership M.Ed. program. Prior to coming to High Tech High, she completed her doctorate at UC Davis in School Organization and Educational Policy. At her dissertation site, she collaborated with teachers to design and implement an action research project that led to many school-wide reforms. As a graduate teaching fellow at UC Davis and an adjunct faculty member in Hamline University’s Graduate School of Education, Stacey taught courses on action research and socio-cultural issues in education, mentored practicing teachers, and presented her work at multiple educational conferences. She began her career as a high school physics and math teacher at a Portland, Oregon high school affiliated with the Coalition of Essential Schools. She later served as a teacher and science specialist in a California charter school. Stacey majored in physics and English at Willamette University, where she also earned a Master’s in Teaching and a secondary physics and math credential.

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Ben Daley, M.A.

Faculty member in the Teacher Leadership and School Leadership programs

Ben began his High Tech High tenure as a physics and robotics teacher. His role evolved to School Director, and then to Chief Academic Officer and Chief Operating Officer. As CAO and COO, Ben works closely with school directors and teachers to provide leadership for hiring, curriculum, and professional development for all High Tech schools as well as working with other staff on the non-teaching side of the organization.  Ben graduated from Haverford College with a bachelor’s degree in physics and teaching credentials in both physics and math. He went on to receive a Master’s of Arts in Education with a focus on Teaching and Learning from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Deborah W. Meier, M.A.

HTH GSE Board of Mentors

Deborah Meier is currently on the faculty of New York University’s Steinhardt School of Education as a senior scholar and adjunct professor.  She is also a Board member and director of New Ventures at Mission Hill, director and advisor to the Forum for Democracy and Education, and on the Board of The Coalition of Essential Schools.  Meier has spent more than four decades working in public education as a teacher, writer and public advocate. She began her teaching career as a kindergarten and Head Start teacher in Chicago, Philadelphia and New York City schools. She was the founder and teacher-director of a network of highly successful public elementary schools in East Harlem.  Between 1992 and 1996 she also served as co-director of the Coalition Campus Project that successfully redesigned the reform of two large failing city high schools, and created a dozen new small Coalition schools.  She was an advisor to New York City’s Annenberg Challenge and Senior Fellow at the Annenberg Institute at Brown University from 1995-1997.  From 1997 to 2005, she was the founder and principal of the Mission Hill School, a K-8 Boston Public Pilot school serving 180 children in the Roxbury community.

Meier attended Antioch College and received a Master’s in history from the University of Chicago. She has received honorary degrees from Bank Street College of Education, Brown, Bard, Clark, Teachers College of Columbia University, Dartmouth, Harvard, Hebrew Union College, Hofstra, The New School, Lesley College, SUNY Albany, UMASS Lowell, and Yale. She was a recipient of the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship in 1987.  Her books, The Power of Their Ideas: Lessons to America from a Small School in Harlem (1995), Will Standards Save Public Education? (2000), In Schools We Trust (2002), Keeping School, with Ted and Nancy Sizer (2004) and Many Children Left Behind (2004) are all published by Beacon Press.

Theodore R. Mitchell, Ph.D.

HTH GSE Board of Mentors

Ted Mitchell is President and CEO of the NewSchools Venture Fund, a venture philanthropy firm working to transform public education by supporting the creation of entrepreneurial organizations that serve the nation’s most underserved communities. Ted became the CEO of NewSchools in the fall of 2005. He began a lifetime’s work in education as a professor at Dartmouth College, moving to Stanford, then to UCLA, and most recently to Occidental College, where he served as President from 1999-2005. Ted is a national leader in the effort to provide high-quality education for all students and has long been active in California and Los Angeles educational reform initiatives. He currently chairs the Governor’s Committee on Educational Excellence, charged with making recommendations to overhaul California’s system of K-12 finance and governance.  Ted received his bachelor’s degree in History and Economics, his master’s degree in History, and his doctorate in the history of American education, all from Stanford. He also served as a member of the Stanford Board of Trustees from 1985-1990.

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Robert C. Riordan, Ed.D.

Faculty member in the Teacher Leadership and School Leadership programs

Robert (Rob) Riordan is the Dean of the HTH GSE. Rob has worked as a teacher, trainer, and program developer for 35 years. He is one of the founders of High Tech High, and served as special assistant to the Principal at the Cambridge (MA) Rindge and Latin School (CRLS), overseeing the re-design of that high school into five small schools. Earlier, as a teacher at CRLS, Rob developed an award-winning writing center and two high school internship programs, for which he was named National School to Work Practitioner of the Year in 1994. He is co-author, with Adria Steinberg and Kathleen Cushman, of Schooling for the Real World: The Essential Guide to Rigorous and Relevant Learning (Jossey Bass, 1999).  Rob was a lead researcher and then Director of the New Urban High School Project. He earned his M.A.T. and doctorate from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and his bachelor’s degree from Haverford College.

Larry Rosenstock, J.D.   

Faculty member in the Teacher Leadership and School Leadership programs  

Larry Rosenstock is the President of the HTH Graduate School of Education and the Chief Executive Officer of High Tech High. Larry earned a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Brandeis University in 1970. In 1985 he earned a Master’s of Education in Education Administration from Cambridge College, and in 1986 he received a law degree from Boston University School of Law. Larry taught carpentry for eleven years in urban high schools before serving as staff attorney at the Harvard Center for Law and Education. At the Center, he collaborated on the authorization of the 1990 Perkins Vocational Education and Applied Technology Act. He was, for six years, Executive Director of the Rindge School for Technical Arts (Cambridge, MA) which was at the forefront of current changes in technical arts education practice. Larry was a lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education for five years, and later directed the New Urban High School Project of the U.S. Department of Education. He came to San Diego in 1997, as the president of Price Charities, and was one of the founders of High Tech High.

Leslie Santee Siskin, Ph.D.

HTH GSE Board of Mentors

Leslie Santee Siskin is a noted sociologist of organizations and organizational change. Her research focuses on high school structuring, restructuring, and reform. She is the author or co-author of several articles and books about high schools, including Realms of Knowledge: Academic Departments in Secondary Schools, The Subjects in Question: Departmental Organization and the High School, and The New Accountability: High Schools and High-stakes Testing. She has been a Fellow at Columbia University and Cambridge University, and was Associate Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and at Hofstra before coming to New York University. Leslie earned her master’s and doctoral degrees from Stanford University, and her bachelor’s from Middlebury College.

Nancy Faust Sizer

HTH GSE Board of Mentors

Nancy Faust Sizer is a career teacher who has worked in public and private high schools, including Cambridge Rindge and Latin, Phillips Academy, and the Wheeler School. With her husband, Theodore R. Sizer, she has taught at Brown University and currently teaches at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Both Nancy and Ted recently served as acting co-principals at the Francis W. Parker Charter Essential School where Nancy also was Transition Counselor, helping to lead its first graduating class through the transition to postsecondary education. The Students Are Watching: Schools and the Moral Contract (Beacon Press, 1999) is her most recent book, written with her husband Ted.

Azul Terronez, M.A.

Faculty member in the Teacher Leadership program

After completing his Bachelors and Masters degree at UCLA, Azul Terronez began his career in education teaching in a 6th grade bilingual/ESL classroom in inner city Los Angeles. He taught for 5 years - focusing on humanities, reading and U.S. history - and served as an assistant principal at middle schools in Los Angeles and Texas. He was the principal of Hopewell Middle School in Round Rock ISD, where he took the school from Near Unacceptable to Recognized. He also worked as an Associate Programs Officer for the Texas High School Project and served as a consultant for New Technology Foundation. Azul is passionate about school climate and has worked with several districts and groups nationally, including the Boomerang Project and Learning For Living, Inc., to train counselors, teachers and principals on how to transform their schools. He has served as the Curator of Media for the Southwest Museum in Highland Park, California, the Director of the Nosotros Youth Theater in Hollywood, and was the Theatrical Director for Cat skills West in Beverly Hills. He was recently awarded Honorary Life Membership by the Texas Congress of Parents and Teachers. Azul has been with High Tech High in several capacities ranging from teacher to school director since 2005.

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