NEWS & ANNOUNCEMENTS
University of Cincinnati president to discuss Richmond area education obligations Feb. 16
by Mike Frontiero
VCU School of Education
February 4, 2009
University of Cincinnati President Nancy L. Zimpher, Ph.D., will discuss the Richmond area’s obligation to support education and how it can be improved, at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Education’s Fifth Annual John S. Oehler Lecture for Educational Leadership.
This free lecture will be held Monday, Feb. 16, 2009, from 1:30 p.m. to 3 p.m. in the VCU Student Commons, Ballroom B, 907 Floyd Ave., Richmond, Va.
Dr. Zimpher is a widely recognized leader in higher education, civic engagement, economic development and urban education reform and leads one of the nation’s top public research universities.
She is a co-founder of Strive, a Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky birth through career collaborative, which involves higher education institutions in the region, urban P-12 school districts in Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky, as well as business, civic and nonprofit organizations.
High school graduation rates in our nation’s urban areas lag behind those of the suburbs and in many cases are as low as 50 percent. In her keynote speech “Cities and the Education Imperative,” President Zimpher will examine how important it is for our nation’s well-being to become more strategic and systemic about our education pipeline.
She will examine the case study of Strive, which will soon be expanding to other 
cities. Strive unites common providers around shared issues, goals, measurements and results, and then actively supports and strengthens strategies that work. Strive is focused on home, school and community: the building blocks for successful students, productive citizens and thriving cities.
The lecture respondent will be Jo Lynne DeMary, Ed.D., Director of the VCU School of Education Center for School Improvement and a professor in the Department of Educational Leadership. She was the first woman to serve as Virginia Superintendent of Public Instruction.
The annual lecture is held in honor of John S. Oehler, Ed.D., who served for 16 years as dean of the VCU School of Education and more than 30 years of service to VCU.
As dean, he was responsible for cutting-edge teacher preparation programs which moved the School of Education to the forefront in teacher education reform. He served in numerous leadership roles at the state and national levels.
An endowment to honor Dr. Oehler has been established by faculty and friends to provide for this lecture.
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