Academic Dean David Deming oversees faculty activities at Harvard Kennedy School, including academic appointments, faculty development, and the Faculty Steering Committee. Academic Dean for Teaching and Curriculum Suzanne Cooper is responsible for teaching and learning initiatives, including education technology and SLATE (Strengthening Learning and Teaching Excellence).
Academic Planning
Faculty Recruitment
Educational Technology
SLATE
Communications Program
Faculty & Research
David Deming
David Deming, the Isabelle and Scott Black Professor of Political Economy, is the Academic Dean of Harvard Kennedy School, a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and the Faculty Director of the Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy. His research focuses broadly on the economics of skill development, education and labor markets. He is a Principal Investigator (along with Raj Chetty and John Friedman) at the CLIMB Initiative, an organization that seeks to study and improve the role of higher education in social mobility. Deming also studies the “future of work”, in particular focusing on how technology changes the labor market returns to skills and the resulting implications for college and career pathways. He recently won the David N. Kershaw Prize, which is awarded biannually to scholars who have made distinguished contributions to the field of public policy and management under the age of 40. He is currently serving as a coeditor at the AEJ: Applied.
Suzanne Cooper
Dean Cooper is the Edith M. Stokey Senior Lecturer in Public Policy and Academic Dean for Teaching and Curriculum. In this capacity she is responsible for all aspects of the Kennedy School’s teaching mission and works on a broad range of academic and faculty issues, including academic planning, curriculum, SLATE, and educational technology. In addition, she manages faculty teaching and administrative responsibilities and all data analysis regarding faculty and curriculum at Harvard Kennedy School. Dean Cooper previously served as Faculty Chair of the Master in Public Policy program, overseeing all academic aspects of the program. In addition, she served as Director of the Dean's Future Committee on Teaching Programs, providing a comprehensive analysis of Kennedy School degree programs, including an extensive survey of alumni career paths. Her teaching focuses on macroeconomics, empirical methods, and policy analysis. Dean Cooper has an A.B. in Economics from Smith College and a Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford University.