PHILADELPHIA -- Stanton Wortham, professor of education and associate dean for academic affairs in the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education, will serve as the school's interim dean, beginning Aug. 1.  

He will succeed Susan Fuhrman, who is leaving Penn to become president of Teachers College at Columbia University.  Wortham, recently named the Howard P. and Judith R. Berkowitz Professor of Education at Penn, previously served as acting GSE dean in 2002 while Fuhrman was on a leave of absence.  A search for a permanent dean will begin this summer.

Wortham, who came to Penn from Bates College in 1998, has written widely on classroom discourse and on how students develop individual and social identities as a part of their school experiences.  His research has earned him a reputation as one of the premier scholars in the field.  He teaches courses in education, culture and society; ethnographic and qualitative research methods; and the linguistic anthropology of education.  For two years, he served as chair of the school Educational Leadership Division.

Wortham is a member of Penn's graduate groups in education, anthropology and folklore and folk life, and is a member of the associated faculty of Penn's Annenberg School for Communication.

 A graduate of Swarthmore College, he holds a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.  He has written three books and is currently working on a fourth.  He has edited five scholarly volumes, authored numerous articles, book chapters and reviews and serves on the editorial boards of several professional journals.

Penn's Graduate School of Education is consistently ranked in the U.S. News & World Report's top 10 nationally. The school plays a central role in educational reform efforts in Philadelphia and an increasingly significant role in national policy discussions on the reform of American elementary, secondary and higher education, as well as in international education.