PHILADELPHIA -- The Executive Doctorate in Higher Education Management at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education is celebrating 10 years of developing leaders in higher education.

“Congratulations are in order,” Penn GSE Dean Andy Porter said, “to Blake Naughton, Doug Lynch and the entire faculty in the higher education division at Penn GSE, including Bob Zemsky, who began this pioneering effort. 

“Over the years, this program has shown that it is truly the gold standard. Its unique, executive format allows emerging leaders to take their knowledge and skills to the next level and puts them at the forefront of leadership in higher education.”

As a part of its 10-year-anniversary celebration, Penn GSE faculty members and higher education leaders addressed novel approaches at the Higher Education Leadership Conference: Advancing Higher Education Innovation earlier this month. As part of the event, more than 25 presidents of colleges and universities in the United States sat down together for the National Presidential Roundtable, Rescuing Higher Education: Changing the Production Function, moderated by Bob Zemsky.    

“From selective research universities to small liberal arts colleges,” Naughton said, “the entire post-secondary education system is struggling to develop new models of production to increase access, improve graduation rates, and accelerate scientific discovery.”

Naughton is a senior fellow and director of the Exec Doc Program.

“Facsimiles of institutions designed decades ago are proving insufficient to meet America’s needs within our globalized economy,” he said, “thus prompting governing boards and executive search firms to find senior institutional leaders who can innovate and guide the next epoch in the development of higher education.” 

As part of the 10th-anniversary celebration, Zemsky was awarded the inaugural Robert Zemsky Medal for Innovation in Higher Education.

He was selected for his lifetime commitment to higher education and for initiating the use of market analyses for higher education.  Zemsky spent his career at Penn focusing on how to keep universities true to their missions while simultaneously staying “market smart.”

For 20 years, he served as the founding director for Penn’s Institute for Research on Higher Education, one of the country’s major public-policy centers specializing in educational research and analysis.