Patricia Albjerg Graham

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  Patricia Albjerg Graham began her history teaching career at Deep Creek High School serving Virginia’s Dismal Swamp in 1955 after graduating from Purdue University. Subsequently she taught high school history and English in Norfolk, Virginia and New York City. She received her PhD from Columbia University in 1964 while teaching at Indiana University and returned to New York in 1965 as Director of Barnard College’s Education Program. In 1974 she moved to Harvard University as professor of the history of education and dean of the Radcliffe Institute and vice-president of Radcliffe College. President Jimmy Carter appointed her  Director of the National Institute of Education in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare where she served from 1977 to 1979 when she returned to Harvard as Charles Warren Professor of the History of Education. She served as dean of the Graduate School of Education from 1982 to 1991 when she became president of the Spencer Foundation in Chicago and retired from it in 2000 and completed her service at Harvard in 2006. A professorship at Harvard is named for her.  She has held fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute, and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation. Her publications include five books, most recently Schooling America.  She has served on three corporate boards and a number of non-profit boards. Presently she is chair of the board of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.  She and Loren R. Graham married in 1955, and they have a daughter, Marguerite.