Office of the Provost and Dean of the College

Sachs and Tisch Lectureships

Sachs Lecturer

Ryan Shaun Joazeiro de Baker is Visiting Associate Professor in the Department of Human Development. He earned his Ph.D. in Human-Computer Interaction from Carnegie Mellon University, and was a post-doctoral fellow in the Learning Sciences at the University of Nottingham. He earned his Bachelor's Degree (Sc.B.) in Computer Science from Brown University. Dr. Baker has been Assistant Professor of Psychology and the Learning Sciences at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. He previously served as the first Technical Director of the Pittsburgh Science of Learning Center DataShop, the largest public repository for data on the interaction between learners and educational software. He is currently serving as the founding President of the International Educational Data Mining Society, and as Associate Editor of the Journal of Educational Data Mining. His research combines educational data mining, learning analytics and quantitative field observation methods in order to better understand how students respond to educational software, and how these responses impact their learning. He studies these issues within intelligent tutors, simulations, and educational games. In recent years, he and his colleagues have developed strategies to make inferences in real-time about students' motivation, meta-cognition, affect, and robust learning.

Dr. Baker will deliver his lecture entitled, "Educational Data Mining: Predict the Future, Change the Future," on Monday, November 5, 2012 in Milbank Chapel at 5:00pm. 

RSVP online: http://www.tc.columbia.edu/calendar.htm?EventID=11125

RSVP via email: tcinvite@tc.columbia.edu

Julius Sachs (1849-1934) was born in Baltimore, the son of a rabbi.  His older brothers became investment experts, forming a Sachs investment firm. At the time of his marriage to Rosa Sachs, the firm merged with rival Goldman.  Upon receiving his doctorate in Europe, he returned to New York to found the Sachs Collegiate Institute for Boys and Girls, which is today known as the Collegiate School.  In 1902, Julius Sachs was invited by Dean Russell to join the faculty at Teachers College.  His fields included the classics, philology, archeology, and art.  Sachs was part of the Committee of Eight who, in 1909, wrote a new curriculum for teaching history which became a model for teaching social studies in the elementary grades.

Dr. and Mrs. Julius Sachs established the lecture series in 1924 with the purpose of making it possible to bring distinguished visiting lecturers to campus, chosen by the Dean, to deliver lectures "on some phase of education best suited to promotion of progress in secondary education."