Our Team & Our Home

Our Team

Our Home

Bringing Theory to Practice moved to Elon University in 2020, after 15 years at the Association of American Colleges and University in Washington, DC. We’re grateful to AAC&U for hosting us, and we look forward to continued collaboration. We’re excited now to have faculty, staff, and student colleagues and a campus home — especially on a campus so resonant with the mission and values of BT2P.

Elon is a national leader in engaged, holistic education. Friends of BT2P will be interested in its well-known Core Curriculum, its requirements for experiential learning, and the opportunities it offers students for civic engagement, global learning, and other high-impact practices. We’re happy that BT2P supported these programs with several grants over the years and that Elon is one of the eleven institutions in our PLACE Collaboratory.

Elon is home to other important public-facing programs, along with BT2P. These include North Carolina Campus Compact and the university’s Center for Engaged Learning, an internationally-recognized hub for innovation in pedagogy and curriculum design. We look forward to learning from and working with our Elon colleagues.

David Scobey

David joined Bringing Theory to Practice as Director in July 2018, following the retirement of Don Harward. For twenty years, he has worked to advance the democratic purposes of higher education. especially through the integration of public engagement with liberal education and the inclusion of underserved students. From 1989 to 2005, he taught American Studies, U.S. cultural history, and architecture at the University of Michigan; in 1998, he founded UM Arts of Citizenship program, which fostered public work and community projects in the arts, humanities, and design. He has served as Director of the Harward Center for Community Partnerships at Bates College (2005-10), the inaugural Executive Dean of the School for Public Engagement at The New School in New York City (2010-2014), and Senior Scholar for The Graduate! Network, which supports college access and success for adult learners (2014-2018). He has a Ph.D. in American Studies at Yale University and is the author of Empire City: The Making and Meaning of the New York City Landscape (Temple University Press, 2002), as well as other studies of U.S. cultural and urban history. He also writes extensively on the recent history of and current issues in higher education. (Email: [email protected])

Kate Griffin

Kate Griffin Kate has been with BT2P on and off since 2019 and is happy to be formally rejoining the team as BT2P’s Associate Director. In her previous experience with BT2P, she co-led the PLACE Collaboratory with David and a national community of students, faculty, and community leaders working on humanities-based civic engagement projects and helped to conceive and design the Paradigm Project, BT2P’s major new initiative around the movement for holistic and transformative change in higher education. Her current work with BT2P includes leading strategy and design for the Paradigm Project along with contributing to our movement-building, narrative change, fundraising, and operations.

In addition to her work with BT2P, Kate is an ICF-certified leadership coach who works with established and emerging leaders and changemakers in the higher education, arts and culture, and social change sectors and does strategy, design, and changemaking consulting. Kate has a BA in American Studies and African-American Studies from Wesleyan University and a PhD in American Studies from the University of Minnesota. She has worked extensively in the non-profit sector as an Executive Director, strategist, program designer, network-builder, and founder and has deep experience with leadership development, capacity-building, and changemaking processes. She lives in Berkeley, California and works remotely for BT2P. (Email: [email protected])

Todd Rosendahl

Todd joins Bringing Theory to Practice after working for nearly a decade in community-based advocacy non-profit organizations at the local, state, and national levels. His work focused on supporting LGBTQ+ students, faculty, staff, and families in K-12 schools and colleges/universities through staff professional development and policy writing and implementation. Most recently he was the national director of programs for a non-profit working to end youth and young adult homelessness by partnering with local organizations and universities to create new housing programs that center the needs of the most marginalized students and young adults. He was appointed by Governor Roy Cooper to the North Carolina State Youth Advisory Council for 2018-2020, and reappointed for 2020-2022.

As Assistant Director, Todd manages all budgeting, financial, and office operations, oversees grant-making programs as well as grant acquisition and reporting, and works with the director on strategy and program development. He is thrilled to support the work of BT2P and Elon University, where his husband is a faculty member. Todd holds a Bachelor of Music degree (Percussion Performance & K-12 Education) from the University of Iowa and a Master’s and Ph.D. in Musicology from Florida State University. (Email: [email protected])

Paul Schadewald

Paul joined Bringing Theory to Practice in 2022 after over two decades in civic engagement at Macalester College in St. Paul, MN. He is the Vice Chair of the National Advisory Board for Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life and is a National Field Leader for the Bonner Network. He also serves on the Member of Council of Impact Hub, Minneapolis-St. Paul, part of the global impact hub network. The book he co-edited, Digital Community Engagement, won the book of the year award from the National Council on Public History (2019-2020). He has also published in the areas of faculty development, civic professionalism, and community-based research. He earned his Ph.D. in U.S. History from Indiana University, Bloomington, and a B.A. in History from St. Olaf College. He is excited about advancing transformative undergraduate education through the Paradigm Project. (Email: [email protected])

Gillian Perry

Gillian Perry joins Bringing Theory to Practice as a writer, educator, and advocate for equitable and accessible education. Prior to her graduate studies in creative writing, she worked as an Associate Editor at Pearson Education in San Francisco, publishing science texts in Health, Kinesiology, Nutrition, and Anatomy and Physiology. Most recently, she worked as a Lecturer at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro where she taught courses in Rhetoric and English Literature. A few of her book reviews are published in The Carolina Quarterly and Heavy Feather Review, and her fiction is published in Cleaver Magazine-Issue 42.

As the Communications Coordinator, Gillian handles content creation and writing on behalf of Bringing Theory to Practice, including the Bringing It! newsletter. She is honored to support the many fantastic initiatives of this organization. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of California, Berkeley and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (Fiction) from the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. (Email: [email protected])

Gianna Smurro

Gianna Smurro Gianna is excited to work with Bringing Theory to Practice team as a Communications and Editorial Intern, where she provides assistance with Communications. At Elon University, Gianna is continuing her education as a Communications Fellow for the class of 2024 studying Journalism, Cinema & Television Arts, and Political Science. She is also a CEL Student Scholar with the Center for Engaged Learning where she collaborates on multi-institutional international research on Work-Integrated Learning. Gianna joins BT2P as a member of Elon’s Providing Aid through Campus Employment (PACE) Program, which supports work-driven students in obtaining positions on campus that are designed to provide meaningful experiences.

Grace Richey

Grace Richey joined the BT2P team as a Communications & Editorial Intern in January 2023. She is a second-year student at Elon University studying Strategic Communications and Digital Art. Grace is also a member of the Public Relations Student Society of America, an on-campus student-led group focused on networking, professional development, and other skills useful for students studying communications. Her energy, skillset, and classroom learning will inform our social media, the BT2P website, and the Bringing It bi-weekly email.