Rebecca A. Thessin

Rebecca A. Thessin is an Associate Professor of Educational Administration at the George Washington University Graduate School of Education and Human Development. She is currently serving as the Principal Investigator for GW on the Wallace Foundation's Equity Centered Principal Initiative, through which she is facilitating GW's Educational Leadership and Administration program partnership to prepare equity-centered leaders with the DC Public Schools. She recently completed research projects funded by AERA and the Spencer and Wallace Foundations, which focused on central office's support of principals' leadership of improvement and on the learning development experiences of assistant principals. Her work appears in both peer-reviewed and practitioner journals, including Leadership and Policy in Schools, Journal of Research on Leadership Education, Journal of School Leadership, Journal of Educational Administration, Planning and Changing, and Kappan Magazine, among others. At GW, Dr. Thessin serves as the instructor for numerous courses in the Educational Leadership and Administration program, including Advanced Equity-Centered Instructional Leadership for School Improvement, Instructional Leadership for School Improvement, and Leading Evidence-Based Action Research for School Improvement. Prior to her current position, she was most recently the Chief School Improvement Officer for the Montgomery County, Maryland, Public Schools, and she had served as the Associate Superintendent for Professional Development and School Support for this same district. She previously was the Director of School Improvement and Professional Development in the Stamford, CT Public Schools, and she began her career in education as a high school teacher. Dr. Thessin holds a doctorate in the Urban Superintendency from the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE), two Master's degrees from HGSE and a bachelor's degree in History and Teacher Preparation from Yale University.