Dr. Bernard R. Gifford
At the FOCAS seminar, '95
- Professor in the Division of Education in Mathematics, Science and
Technology, University of California, Berkeley.
Dr. Gifford is also the Founder, Chair \& Chief Instructional Officer
of the Academic Systems Corporation, a three-year old Silicon Valley
educational software developer.
Ph.D. (Radiation Biology and Biophysics, 1972), University of Rochester
Medical School, where he was an Atomic Energy Commission Fellow in
Nuclear Science and also elected to Phi Beta Kappa;
Kennedy Fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government as well as
a Loeb Fellow at the Graduate School of Design (City and Regional
Planning), Harvard University;
Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters, Longs Island University, 1988.
- Books: Policy Perspectives on Educational Testing, Kluwer Academic Press,
1993; Testing Policy and Test Performance: Education, Language, and
Culture, Kluwer Academic Press, 1989,
History in the Schools: What Shall We Teach? Macmillan, 1988, etc.
Papers: The Future of Technology in Education, Business Week, November
15, 1993; Where is the Knowledge? Knowledge Management, Research and
Pedagogy in the Electronic Age, Education Libraries, Vol. 16, No. 3,
1992; Just-In-Time Learning Systems: The time is Now, CALICO, Vol. 9,
No. 3, 1992, etc.
- Dr. Gifford served for six years (1983-89) as the Chancellor's Professor
and Dean of the Graduate School of Education, University of California,
Berkeley. During his tenure as Dean, the School launched new Ph.D.
programs in Mathematics and Science Education, Cognitive Science,
and Instructional Technology, while increasing external support for
faculty research, graduate student assistance and university-school
district partnerships twenty-fold.
The National Center for Research on Writing, the National Center for
Research on Vocational Education, both funded by the U.S. Department
of Education following national competitions, are among the major
research programs launched at Berkeley during his period of
stewardship as Dean.
While on leave from the University of California (1989-92), he was
with Apple Computer Inc., where he was Vice President of Education,
responsible for all of Apple-USA's K-12 and higher education programs.
While employed at Apple, he also wrote a well received column on
education, technology and public policy, for the Chronicle of
Higher Education and Education Week.
Dr. Gifford's current research and teaching interests are: 1) the
design of asynchronous, adaptive and interactive multimedia
instruction and learning support systems; 2) the impact of educational
technologies on the nature and character of instructional work; 3)
the behavior of organizations during periods of fiscal stress and rapid
technological change; and 4) the changing political economy of U.S.
higher education.
- Dr. Gifford lives with his wife Guadalupe Valdes -- a professor of
Spanish and Education at Stanford University -- and two of their six
children, Nelson Bernard (14) and Elizabeth Danielle (8) in Pala Alto,
California. He is a passionate baseball fan and part-time little
league coach -- a legacy of his early years in Brooklyn, New York,
where he claims he was the only New York Giants fan in his Brooklyn,
New York Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood -- located only a stone's
throw from the legendary Ebbets Field, the home of the Brooklyn
Dodgers. He counts among the highlights of his life his two meetings
with Willie Mays -- the first encounter taking place when he was
eight years old, and the second when he was thirty-nine. He reflects
that he was a great deal more nervous at their second meeting.
