The Department of Education Policy & Leadership

James Guthrie, Ph.D.
Professor
Senior Fellow & Director of Education Policy Studies, George W. Bush Institute

Dr. James Guthrie joined the Department of Education Policy & Leadership faculty in January 2010 as a Concurrent Fellow; he also serves as a Senior Fellow at the George W. Bush Institute. Dr. Guthrie is the Bush Institute's Director of Education Policy Studies and will direct a program of research into ways to improve the quality of school leaders, including principals and administrators.

Before his concurrent appointment to SMU and the Bush Institute, Dr. Guthrie was the Patricia and Rodes Hart Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy and Director of the Peabody Center for Education Policy at Vanderbilt University, whose education school was ranked No. 1 in the country last year by U.S. News & World Report.

Dr. Guthrie is the author or co-author of 20 books and more than 200 academic and professional articles. He serves as a frequent expert witness in court cases and has been a consultant for state, national and international agencies and governments. Dr. Guthrie has been selected to serve on panels of the National Academy of Sciences and is the winner of 12 awards and academic fellowships, among them the Alexander Heard Distinguished Service Professor Award at Vanderbilt University.

Dr. Guthrie was a professor for 27 years at the University of California at Berkeley, holds a B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from Stanford University, and undertook postdoctoral study in public finance at Harvard. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Oxford Brookes College, Oxford, England, and the Irving R. Melbo Visiting Professor at the University of Southern California.