COVID Impacts: Disrupting Education

Speakers for this event

• Chance Cook

  Chance Cook

  Chance Cook currently serves as Assistant Head of School and Academic Dean at Academy Prep, a tuition-free, college preparatory middle school in Southside St. Petersburg for students qualifying for need-based scholarships. Prior to joining the Academy Prep family, he worked as a teacher, coach, department chair, and dean at private day and boarding schools across the United States. His work at Academy Prep centers on enhancing academic programming and outcomes while leading professional development for teachers, specifically the incorporation of research-based best practices across academic disciplines and creation of culturally relevant curricula. Chance holds an MPhil in Educational Leadership and School Improvement from the University of Cambridge, where his research focused on the concept of distributed leadership and relative efficacy of 'middle leaders' in K-12 schools.

• Thomas W. Smith PhD

  Thomas W. Smith PhD

  Thomas W. Smith (Board Member and Co-Founder of the St. Petersburg Conference on World Affairs) is Professor of Political Science and Associate Dean of the Judy Genshaft Honors College at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg. He holds a B.A. in Anthropology from the College of William & Mary and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia. He has taught at USF since 2000. From 1997-2000 Dr. Smith was an assistant professor of International Relations at Koç University in Istanbul. During the summer of 1999 he was a visiting scholar at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University. He spent the 2007-2008 academic year at Stanford University.