President Biden Nominates Adam Gamoran as Next IES Director
President Biden Nominates Adam Gamoran as Next IES Director
 
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September 2024

Adam Gamoran

On September 6, President Joe Biden announced his intention to nominate Adam Gamoran, president of the William T. Grant Foundation, to serve as the next director of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES). The nomination is required to be confirmed by the Senate.

The nomination to fill the vacancy was created by the completion of former IES Director Mark Schneider’s six-year term in March. Matthew Soldner, commissioner of IES’s National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, has been serving as acting IES director since Schneider’s term ended.

In addition to leading the William T. Grant Foundation since 2013, Gamoran has served in key leadership roles on IES activities. From 2010 to 2016, he served as a member of the National Board for Education Sciences (NBES), the IES advisory board. In addition, Gamoran served as the chair of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) committee that produced the consensus study report, The Future of Education Research at IES, in 2022. The report was one of three commissioned reports that examined IES activities and informed future directions as part of IES’s 20th anniversary in 2022.

Gamoran has served in additional key leadership roles, including as the former chair of the NASEM Board on Science Education and as chair of the Wisconsin Center for Education Research. Gamoran is an AERA Fellow and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2014.

AERA is supporting Gamoran’s nomination to serve as IES director. In a September 30 letter to the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, AERA Executive Director Felice J. Levine wrote, “In our view, Dr. Gamoran is an exceptional nominee to lead IES.”

“Given Dr. Gamoran’s substantial research background, expertise, and integrity, along with the current bipartisan demand for and value placed on evidence-based policy and practice in education, we encourage the Senate to move quickly with his confirmation,” added Levine.

The earliest that the Senate HELP Committee could take up the nomination would be in November, as Congress will be on recess in October for the election.