Dean's Profile

Dr. Leslie T. Fenwick has nearly 20 years of experience in higher education, public policy, philanthropy, and urban K-12 schools. From 2000-2003, she held an appointment as a Visiting Scholar in Education at Harvard University. Prior to this appointment she was a Visiting Fellow with Harvard University’s Administrative Fellows Program. Additionally, she served as a program officer at the Southern Education Foundation (SEF) where she coordinated minority teacher pipeline programs in 11 southeastern states which were supported by an $11 million grant from The Wallace Funds. Fenwick was also a university program director for Troops to Teachers, UNCF’s largest foundation-sponsored program supported by the Ford Foundation. Dr. Fenwick is a tenured professor of educational policy in the School of Education and has held appointments as a department chair and associate dean.

A former urban school teacher, school administrator, and legislative aide on educational reform, Dr. Fenwick is editor of the texts, Patterns of Excellence: Teacher Quality through Diversity and School Leadership: Expanding Horizons of the Mind and Spirit. She is also author of three widely circulated policy monographs, Policy Perspectives on Diversity in Teaching and School Leadership, Who Will Lead? Crisis in the Principal’s Office, andPutting School and Community on the Map: Linking School Reform, Neighborhood Revitalization, and Community Building. Dr. Fenwick served as editor of The Principal Advisor, a research-based policy brief published by The Principals’ Center at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She is also author of the education chapters in two publications which are circulated by the Southern Center for Public Policy Studies – The Georgia Legislative Review and The Status of Black Atlanta. Dr. Fenwick’s commentary articles have appeared in Education Week and The Boston Globe.

Fenwick is a contributing author to the recently released book, The Last Word: Controversy and Commentary in American Education. The book features the best commentary essays in the 25-year history of Education Week and boasts selections from former President Bill Clinton, noted historian John Hope Franklin, and esteemed educators Linda Darling-Hammond and Howard Gardner among others.

Dr. Fenwick has delivered over 75 keynote and invited addresses to national conferences including those convened by Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Principals’ Center; Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Social Organization of Schools (CSOS); the National Education Association (NEA); the American Association for Colleges of Teacher Education (AACTE); the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP); the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL); the National Alliance of Black School Educators (NABSE), the Southern Associationof Colleges and Schools (SACS), and the Education Writers Association (EWA). She was among 50 American educators invited to attend the International Conference on Leadership and Ethics held at the University of Oxford, Exeter College (England) in March 2001.

Fenwick earned a BS degree in education from the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia and a PhD in educational policy and leadership at The Ohio State University.