Ron Glass is an Associate Professor of Philosophy of Education at UC Santa Cruz, and PI/Director of the U.C. Center for Collaborative Research for an Equitable California (CCREC), a multi-campus research program initiative. CCREC approaches the state’s crises in the economy, education, employment, environment, health, housing, and nutrition as inextricably linked and as requiring innovative relationships among researchers, community organizations, and policy makers to understand and respond to them. CCREC supports ‘problem-based’ collaborative research grounded in and generated from the complex, entangled situations that comprise the actual challenges confronting low-income, racially, culturally, and linguistically diverse communities. For 2012-2013, Ron is also serving as Acting Associate Director of the CITRIS Data and Democracy Initiative.
Ron focuses his work on processes of ideological formation, and on education as a practice of freedom; he gives particular attention to the role of education in developing a just, pluralistic democracy. He and Pia Lindquist Wong published a book that examines a six-year project that linked school reform in low-income, racially, culturally and linguistically diverse communities with the transformation of teacher preparation: Prioritizing Urban Children, Teachers, and Schools through Professional Development Schools. His essays have appeared in leading journals (such as Educational Researcher, Teacher Education Quarterly, and Democracy and Education), and a number of edited books, and he has presented papers at many regional, national and international conferences, including as the keynote speaker. He consults on program development and evaluation, educational reform, and institutional strategic planning for a variety of organizations, schools, school districts, and universities. Prior to being on university faculties, Dr. Glass directed the San Francisco-based Adult Education Development Project, and collaborated with Paulo Freire and Myles Horton, the world-renowned educators for democracy.
Dr. Glass is the recipient of numerous honors, including: the Stanford University School of Education Outstanding Teaching Award; the Arizona State University Dondrell Swanson Advocate for Social Justice Award; and, the City of Phoenix Human Relations Commission’s Martin Luther King, Jr., Living the Dream Award. He delivered the sixth Francis T. Villemain Memorial Lecture in Democracy, Education and Moral Life, subsequently published in Studies in Philosophy and Education and reprinted in Education, Democracy, and the Moral Life [S. Verducci, M. Katz, G. Biesta (Eds)].
Dr. Glass received a Ph.D. in Philosophy of Education and an M.A. in Philosophy from Stanford University, a C.Phil. in Philosophy of Education from the University of California, Berkeley, and an Ed.M. and an A.B. with honors in History and Science from Harvard University.