Executive Office

Leslie T. Fenwick, PhD, has worked in every sector of education – as a PK-12 school teacher and administrator in urban public and private schools; university faculty member and administrator; foundation program officer; and, legislative aid in the State of Ohio Senate when the state crafted its first omnibus school reform legislation. Additionally, she has worked with federal programs committed to education equity including Head Start and Upward Bound.

Described as a “fearless voice” for educational equity,

Dr. Fenwick is Dean in Residence at the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE). AACTE members are School/College of Education deans, faculty members, and partner organizations that prepare the education workforce of the future. In her role as Dean in Residence, Dr. Fenwick works with AACTE’s national office to ensure that all PK-12 students receive high quality teachers and instruction.

Dr. Fenwick is also Dean Emeritus of the Howard University School of Education where she served as dean for nearly 10 years and during which time the School of Education attained

first-time ranking by U.S. News and World Report (USNWR) as one of the nation’s top-100 Schools/Colleges of Education and held an annual Capitol Hill Policy Forum attended by 300 educators and legislators dedicated to crafting education and social policies that advance equity. She remains a tenured professor of educational policy at Howard University.

A former Visiting Scholar and Visiting Fellow at Harvard University, Fenwick also serves as a Senior Fellow for the McDonald Character Leadership Program at the United States Military Academy at West Point. Dr. Fenwick is regularly called upon to testify about educational equity, college access, and school leadership and teacher quality and diversity to the U.S. Senate, National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), U.S. Conference of Mayors, National Urban League, Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), American Federation of Teachers (AFT), Education Writers Association (EWA), National Education Association (NEA), National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education (NAFEO), Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU), National Alliance of Black School Educators (NABSE), and the Washington Policy Seminar. Additionally, she has been an invited speaker at the National Press Club and appeared on CNN, C-SPAN, and local television networks discussing equal educational opportunity and access.

A nationally known education policy scholar, Dr. Fenwick is co-founder of the Urban Superintendents Academy at the American Association of School Administrators (AASA), The School Superintendents Association. Additionally, she held term appointments as a member of the Harvard University Principals Center Advisory Board, AACTE Board of Directors, and EduTopia’s (George Lucas Education Foundation) National Advisory Board.

Notably, Dr. Fenwick served as an appointed member of the Committee that produced the National Academy of Sciences’ first study about mayoral control of public schools. Recently, she was among a select group of nationally-prominent scholars who advised the National Academy of Education about its teacher diversity study.

Dr. Fenwick is a contributor to the best-selling book, The Last Word: Controversy and Commentary in American Education. Her op-ed articles about education, the economy, and urban development have appeared in the Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Education Week, The Huffington Post, and Diverse Issues in Higher Education. Her research on teacher diversity has been cited by the New York Times and the Center for American Progress.

In keeping with her research about teacher quality, during her tenure as dean Dr. Fenwick served as co-PI for the Ready to Teach Program – a $2.1 million innovative teacher preparation program funded by the U.S. Department of Education that was lauded as a national model by the U.S. Secretary of Education. Dr. Fenwick also managed an $11 million (Wallace Funds) teacher pipeline initiative in 7 southeastern states when she was a program officer at the Southern Education Foundation (SEF) and served as a lead researcher on a $12 million Annenberg Foundation-funded project about school reform, neighborhood revitalization, and community rebuilding.

Presently, Dr. Fenwick is one of 11 members of the Scholarly Advisory Committee for the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) which was established by noted historian Dr. John Hope Franklin to help set the museum’s intellectual agenda and exhibition content.

A former middle school science teacher and science enthusiast, Dr. Fenwick was appointed by NASA Administrator (director) General Charles Bolden to NASA’s inaugural Education and Public Outreach (E/PO) Committee. Additionally, she is a 2014 Salzburg Global Fellow (the cohort was convened in Salzburg, Austria to examine globalization and leadership) and a member of the 1999 cohort of American university administrators invited to the University of Oxford (Exeter College) to discuss ethics and leadership. Dr. Fenwick is the 2011 recipient of the WEB DuBois Award for Leadership in Higher Education from the National Alliance of Black School Educators (NABSE). She has delivered the WEB DuBois Distinguished Lecture to the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Black SIG, the Benjamin E. Mays Distinguished Lecture at Georgia State University, and the Distinguished Researcher Lecture at Kansas State University.

Dr. Fenwick earned a PhD in educational policy and leadership from The Ohio State University where she was a Flescher Fellow and a bachelor’s degree in elementary education from the University of Virginia. She began her career in education as a 4^th grade teacher and was locally celebrated in her hometown of Toledo, Ohio as a Rookie Teacher of the Year. Dr. Fenwick and her husband, H. Patrick Swygert (President Emeritus of Howard University and former president of the State University of New York, Albany) are lifelong educators.