We are excited to announce that Dr. Colleen Murray joins the Haddonfield School District team on Monday, November 5, as Chief Academic Officer.

The role Dr. Murray fills provides leadership in the continuous development and improvement of the entire instructional program of the district. She will lead all efforts to monitor, design and implement the K-12 curriculum instruction, professional development, assessment and accountability.

“My goals for the first few months are to conduct a comprehensive needs assessment,” Murray said. “To do this, I will survey and interview stakeholders using one-on-one and focus group settings. From this data, I will analyze for five ‘buckets’ into which my findings fall, creating plans for each bucket and a roadmap for the district.”

Murray’s academic credentials and work experience have prepared her to excel in this new post. A teacher in middle- and high-school history and social studies for 20 years, she first earned a bachelor’s degree in history and a master’s in secondary education, both from the University of Pennsylvania. She went on to earn a master’s in administration from Kean University, a master’s in instructional technology from Stockton University and a doctorate in learning technologies from Pepperdine University.

“My masters’ programs helped me to learn to harness tools to support student-centered learning,” Murray said. “My doctorate from Pepperdine solidified years of research and practice for me, but more importantly, it showed me how essential it is for us in education to engage in forward-thinking, using research and data that has been scientifically gathered and analyzed.”

As a teacher, Murray built a strong foundation for this job. In her most recent position in the Southern Regional School District in Manahawkin, N.J., she created a professional development program using current learning-science research and multiple data sources, such as surveys of teachers, students and alumni, and interviews with administrators and other key leaders. Murray plans to use that research process to conduct the needs assessment for Haddonfield.

Haddonfield superintendent, Dr. Larry Mussoline, said, “I am delighted to have Dr. Murray here as part of our administrative team. She is highly skilled, driven to succeed, and she understands the magnitude of 21st-century educational needs in order to prepare our students for jobs that may or may not exist in our digital world. I am confident that she will work well with our excellent teachers and principals and that her expertise will lead Haddonfield into understanding and utilizing more individualized and blended learning environments.”

Long term, her goals include creating a more cohesive, user-friendly, rigorous and inclusive, living curriculum that is carefully mapped to local, state, national and international learning standards.

“I share Dr. Mussoline’s aspirations to make Haddonfield a nationally recognized leader in the education landscape, preparing our learners for leadership in a changing world,” Murray said.