Thomas Del Prete, Ed.D.

Tom Del Prete has been Director of the Hiatt Center for Urban Education since 1998 and Chair of the Education Department since 1996.  A graduate of Brown University, and a former secondary teacher in History and English, he earned his doctorate from Harvard University, concentrating on teaching, learning, and curriculum.

Professor Del Prete founded and oversees continuing development of the Hiatt Center Partner School Collaborative, which includes the Goddard and Hiatt elementary schools and the Claremont Academy, South High and University Park Campus secondary schools.  The Collaborative is dedicated to the joint development of learning environments and practices that serve the students in "Main South," a diverse and low income area of Worcester.  Likewise, the partnership is committed to developing exemplary models of urban teacher preparation, professional development and school reform, and to learning from the effort.  Professor Del Prete developed the "rounds" model, a classroom-based collaborative learning model for teachers, as well as the curriculum team model that bridges and integrates arts and sciences and practitioner perspectives -- two signature Hiatt Center programs.  He co-chairs the Hiatt Center History Curriculum Team.

In pursuing the partnership work, Professor Del Prete has been awarded grants from the federal Department of Education, the MA State Department of Education, the MA Board of Higher Education, and national and local private foundations.  Most recently, he received a grant from the Greater Worcester Community Foundation to support development of the Main South Secondary School Collaborative.  He is an original and continuing member of the steering committee for University Park Campus School.  He received the Thomas Jefferson award from the Worcester Public Schools for his service to University Park Campus School in 1999, and the John W. Lund Community Achievement award at Clark in 2000.

Professor Del Prete's interests include university-school partnership, models of urban teacher education, secondary school reform, history curriculum and learning, and spirituality and education.  He has been recognized for his scholarship on Thomas Merton and education.  His book Thomas Merton and the Education of the Whole Person earned the first scholarship award given by the International Thomas Merton Society in 1991.  He has published about twenty articles and reviews in Merton studies.  He was elected President of the International Thomas Merton Society for a two year term in 1997.  For more information go to Active Learning and Research.

Courses Taught or Co-Taught

Teaching and Learning
Teaching and Learning II & III
Curriculum and Knowing in History (Summer Institute)
M.A.T. Secondary Practicum
Best Practices: Developing all Students as Readers, Writers, Speakers and Thinkers

Selected Publications

Improving the Odds: Developing Powerful Teaching Practice and a Culture of Learning in Urban High Schools.  
NY: Teachers College Press (forthcoming, January 2010). 

"Equity and Effectiveness: Challenge and Promise in a Tale of Two Schools and a Partnership," Journal of   Equity and Excellence in Education, Volume 39, Number 1, February 2006.

Thomas Del Prete and Ross, Laurie, "Blurring Boundaries: The Promise and Challenge of a District-Community Action Plan for Systemic High School Change in Worcester, MA," New Directions in Youth Development: When, Where, What and How Youth Learn,edited by Karen J. Pittman, Nicole Yohalem, and Joel Tolman, San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, Spring 2003.

"Being What We Are: Thomas Merton's Spirituality of Education," in Nurturing Our Wholeness: Perspectives on Spirituality and Education, edited by John (Jack) P. Miller and Yoshiharu Nakagawa, The Foundation for Educational Renewal, 2002.

Thomas Merton and the Education of the Whole Person, Birmingham, AL: Religious Education Press, 1990 (second printing, October, 1995).