The George Lucas Educational Foundation has named Milton Chen its executive director. Mr. Chen is the founding director of the KQED Center for Education and Lifelong Learning in San Francisco. Since 1987, he has directed the center’s educational programming and outreach services, including workshops, publications, and its World Wide Web site. He succeeds Patty Burness, who recently left the Lucas Foundation to become the executive director of the Entrepreneurs’ Foundation in Menlo Park, Calif.
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The Lucas Educational Foundation, located in Nicasio, Calif., is a nonprofit organization founded by filmmaker George Lucas in 1991. The organization gathers and disseminates information about effective strategies for changing K-12 education. ... The National Council of Teachers of English has named television talk-show host Oprah Winfrey the recipient of its Literacy Award, which honors those outside the field of education who have increased awareness of such issues and stimulated the development of programs to foster literacy. The award recognizes her efforts to popularize reading through Oprah’s Book Club, which recommends books for television viewers to read, and then brings the author on the show to discuss the book.
Gov. Pete Wilson of California has appointed Glenn T. Seaborg, the Nobel Prize-winning chemist, to the state Commission for the Establishment of Academic Content and Performance Standards, which will choose the state’s science standards and which is charged with establishing standards for all core subjects. Mr. Seaborg is the associate director-at-large of the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif. ... Noted education reformer James P. Comer has been named a visiting professor at the University of Maine in Orono. Dr. Comer, a professor of child psychiatry at the Yale University Child Study Center, will work with students, faculty, educators, and policymakers over the next 18 months. He is best known for his reform program designed to improve life and learning for poor children in inner-city schools. The Comer Model seeks to improve a school’s climate for learning by creating an atmosphere of cooperation and trust.
--ADRIENNE D. COLES acoles@epe.org
