Professor Zemsky is the Chair and CEO of The Learning Alliance. From 1980 through 2000, Professor Zemsky served as the founding director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Institute for Research on Higher Education, one of this country’s major public policy centers specializing in educational research and analysis. He also served as Penn’s chief planning officer, and was Master of Hill College House.

Much of his best known writing, including “The Lattice and the Ratchet” and “To Dance with Change” have appeared in Policy Perspectives. Professor Zemsky is also a frequent contributor to Change magazine.

In his research Professor Zemsky pioneered the use of market analyses for higher education and is currently directing the University of Pennsylvania/Thomson Corporation Weatherstation Project that is mapping the market for e-learning. From 1990 through 1995, Professor Zemsky served as Co-Director of the National Center on the Educational Quality of the Workforce and is currently a Senior Scholar with the National Center for Postsecondary Improvement.

In 1998, Change magazine named him as one of higher education’s top forty leaders for his role as an agenda-setter. He is a former Woodrow Wilson Fellow. He was a postdoctoral Social Science Research Council Fellow in Linguistics and was later chair of that Council’s Committee on Social Science Personnel. In 1998 he received a Doctor of Humane Letters (Hon.) from Towson University. He is currently a Trustee of Franklin and Marshall College and a member of the National Advisory Board for the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE).

Education: B.A., Whittier College, 1962; Ph.D. in History, Yale University, 1966