Members of the Decatur Change Effort

Roberto was born in Brooklyn, New York and is the first in his family of Haitian immigrants to attend college. He considers himself an African-Haitian American. As a product of the NYC public school system, he understands first hand the need to motivate and help youth achieve to their potential. Furthermore, he is determined to develop methods for transforming education to better meet the needs of society.

Before coming to Indiana University in 1999 to pursue his doctorate, Roberto worked for five years as a high school mathematics teacher and computer coordinator in the New York City Public Schools. He has facilitated numerous technology workshops for the United Federation of Teachers, and served as Project Facilitator for the New York City Queens Urban Systemic Initiative. He holds a Master of Science Degree in Instructional Technology from New York Institute of Technology. When Roberto arrived to Indiana University in the fall of 1999, he worked as the Assistant to the Director of Project TEAM, a research and development initiative designed to increase the number of students from underrepresented minorities at Indiana University who enter a teacher education program (P-12). As the Assistant to Director of Project TEAM, one of Dr. Joseph's management responsibilities was to provide teaching and youth leadership experience for TEAM preservice teachers. Roberto was also the co-principal investigator on an Eisenhower Professional Development grant. He has served as consultant to the Bloomington DePaul School on a school-wide technology integration project.Professor Joseph is primarily involved in research on facilitating systemic change in public school districts. He has been creating a conceptual framework of the systemic change process to help educational stakeholders develop the competence in designing and reinventing a new educational system. His research currently focuses on understanding and highlighting students' voices in the chanMay 22, 2007ularly interested in researching how to begin to incorporate culture throughout the Instructional Systems Design process.Roberto has published several articles in the area of Systemic Change. He is a Gates Millennium Scholar, and he is committed to assisting schools in creating meaningful learning environments to answer the future needs of students and society.

You can write to Roberto by sending email to Roberto.Joseph@hofstra.edu