Lumina Foundation recently appointed Distinguished Professor Rich DeMillo, director of the Center for 21st Century Universities (C21U) at Georgia Tech, as one of its inaugural Lumina Fellows.  Lumina Foundation is an independent, private foundation committed to designing and building a more accessible, responsive and accountable higher education system.

As one of four Lumina Fellows, DeMillo will help the foundation achieve some of the objectives outlined in its 2013 to 2016 Strategic Plan. Specifically, they will focus on the foundation’s Goal 2025: to increase the proportion of Americans with high-quality college degrees, certificates and credentials to 60 percent by 2025.

“It's a great honor to be selected by Lumina for this important role,” DeMillo said. “Reaching Lumina's 2025 goal is a challenge for all of us in higher education, and it will take innovation on a large scale to be successful. I look at my role as painting futures for colleges and universities. The alternative is to be left behind as the rest of society figures out how to meet the challenge.”

As a former dean of the College of Computing at Georgia Tech, DeMillo founded C21U in 2011 and continues to direct this “living laboratory” for fundamental change in higher education. Also as chair of the Provost’s Council for Educational Technology, DeMillo is responsible for educational technology innovation on the Georgia Tech campus. He is a frequent speaker on higher education and the author of Abelard to Apple: The Fate of American Colleges and Universities, published in 2011 by MIT Press.

DeMillo joins three other thought leaders as the first group of Lumina Fellows for an initial two-year appointment. Together the fellows will, through various forms of public communication, enrich the conversations about college attainment and provide recommendations for policy makers, higher education and business leaders and other important stakeholders to help the ability for the United States to dramatically increase college attainment levels.

The other fellows include:

• Bridget Terry Long, academic dean and the Xander Professor of Education and Economics at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
• Charles Kolb, president of the French-American Foundation.
• Margarita Benitez, interim director of the Emerging Leaders Group at the American Council of Education.

“Mobilizing a broad cross section of society is critical if we are to reach Goal 2025,” said Jamie Merisotis, president and CEO of Lumina Foundation. “The four Lumina Fellows represent a variety of talents and backgrounds, which will help us address the challenges in system redesign and in rethinking policy to dramatically increase education attainment in the United States—the only acceptable outcome if the country is to maintain a competitive workforce and a healthy democracy.”

Links:

Lumina Foundation Announcement